Anum Istafa,
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has mastered the politics of defiance. What it has yet to master is the politics of consequence. Once again, the party is marching towards Islamabad. Once again, negotiations have collapsed. Once again, political differences are being transferred from the negotiating table to the streets. The pattern has become painfully familiar: protest, confrontation, deadlock and another protest. At some point, repetition stops being resistance and starts looking like political failure. PTI’s latest long march comes after negotiations with the government failed to produce a breakthrough.
The talks reportedly remained stuck over issues including access to Imran Khan and the government’s concerns about cooperation on counterterrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Despite the deadlock, PTI has chosen to proceed with its march. This is not simply a disagreement over tactics. It reflects a deeper problem within PTI’s political culture: an almost instinctive belief that compromise is weakness and retreat is betrayal. That mindset may keep the party’s most passionate supporters emotionally invested, but it is hardly a sustainable model of democratic politics. The party has repeatedly turned political disputes into existential battles. Every negotiation becomes a test of loyalty. Every compromise is viewed with suspicion. Every setback is attributed to conspiracy. And every call for moderation risks being portrayed as surrender. A political movement that claims to represent constitutional democracy cannot afford to look the other way when its supporters are associated with attacks on symbols and institutions of the state. If the state must answer for its actions, political parties must also answer for the consequences of their politics. The underlying political lesson of May 9 should be impossible to ignore: when political anger is allowed to become an instrument of confrontation with the state, the consequences can destroy the very political space a party is trying to reclaim. PTI’s greatest strategic mistake may be its failure to understand that the political battlefield has changed. Opposition parties have to negotiate. Governments have to negotiate. Parliament exists precisely because political disagreements cannot all be settled in the streets.
The most troubling aspect of PTI’s politics is no longer simply its confrontation with the government. It is the extent to which political loyalty has become intertwined with personal devotion to one man. There is a fundamental difference between supporting a popular leader and treating that leader as infallible. PTI’s political culture has increasingly blurred that distinction. Imran Khan is not merely presented as the leader of a political party;within parts of the movement, he has become the symbol of an entire national struggle. His political survival is equated with the survival of the cause itself, while criticism of him can be treated as betrayal. That is where a political movement can become dangerous to itself—and potentially to the country. When followers stop questioning their leader, institutions begin to weaken. When political disagreement becomes disloyalty, internal accountability disappears. When every setback is attributed to conspiracies and every criticism is dismissed as propaganda, a movement loses its ability to distinguish between political conviction and political reality. Pakistan is also deeply concerned about the security situation along its western border.
Afghanistan has repeatedly been accused of allowing militant groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, to operate from its territory. At such a sensitive moment, political parties should support Pakistan’s efforts to defend its borders and pressure Kabul to prevent its soil from being used against Pakistan. Instead, PTI’s political messaging has often been viewed as sympathetic toward Afghanistan or insufficiently supportive of Pakistan’s security position. And this is where every Pakistani, regardless of political affiliation, must draw a line. Political parties will come and go. Leaders will rise and fall. Governments will change. But Pakistan remains. No political leader, no party and no political movement is greater than the country itself. As a Pakistani, my first loyalty must therefore be to Pakistan—not to PTI, not to any other political party, and not to any individual. Because when loyalty to a political leader begins demanding that we choose the party over the nation, patriotism requires us to choose the nation.
The writer is Former Journalist at National Herald Tribune and Former Member of National Herald Tribute, Hong-Kong. [email protected]
