The PTI, as expected, but also most unfortunately, has shown that it continues to value its founder above all else, especially the national interest, especially when the nation is faced with a hostile situation created by its primary adversary since the country’s independence in 1947.
While PTI’s leadership has said publicly that their party will always stand with the military if there is a threat from a foreign hostile, and if Pakistan’s well-being is threatened. Unfortunately, however, their actions have, by and large, been quite to the contrary.
Just a cursory glance at news headlines over the past ten days or so will bear this out. The PTI leadership’s obsession, generally speaking, has been with the party’s founder, and with calls for his immediate release. The party has, more or less, used the current situation with tensions between India and Pakistan at a peak to press for a case that former Prime Minister Imran Khan be released.
Of course, the reasoning behind this is their belief, as is the belief of most PTI supporters, that if anyone can unite the nation together against the belligerent Indians, it’s the Great Khan. Of course, the PTI leadership, as well as its hardcore supporters, seem to conveniently overlook the ground reality and that is that the nation is already united against India right now, and it's clearly evident in how people are conducting themselves on media in general and on social and digital media in particular.
The conduct of the PTI in the past few days has also shown that it places the release of its founder above all else, even when the country is facing a possible existential crisis
Of course, there is a segment of the population which is waiting with bated breath for the Government of Pakistan to make a misstep, or do something that will damage its standing in the eyes of the world, or perhaps even for the Indian military misadventure, because to this segment of the population, nothing would be sweeter than for the Pakistani military to be taught a lesson. And we all know who these people are and why they would want such an outcome.
Moving on, the conduct of the PTI in the past few days has also shown that it places the release of its founder above all else, even when the country is facing a possible existential crisis. Why else would it choose not to attend the all-party briefing arranged by the federal government and ISPR recently? There can be no other reason for that other than playing petty politics and placing the party leader above national interest.
Of course, the fact that Imran Khan’s party did not attend such a crucial briefing has been exploited by Indian media and by Indians on social media as a sign of a lack of unity even at such a crucial juncture. This, then, is used to attack Pakistan’s military as not having the trust of all Pakistanis, even when faced with an existential threat from a perpetually hostile neighbour.
Added to this is the participation of PTI’s secretary general at the Harvard Pakistan Conference in the US recently, where the forum was used to sharply criticise Pakistan and its military and their policies. Again, the timing of this would seem most awkward to Pakistan and its well-wishers. However, as mentioned earlier, the PTI places its founder above all else, and that is precisely what happened at this conference as well, and the sessions where this took place were recorded and posted on Twitter/X by the party’s mouthpieces currently living in self-imposed exile in the US and elsewhere.
All in all, this reflects some very poor judgment on the part of the PTI and shows that it can not be expected to place the national interest supreme and think in the long term, or to act maturely and wisely. And that in turn would reinforce the perception among some quarters that perhaps it’s best that it’s not in power in the country anymore.