A week before Pakistan’s last elections catapulted Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf into power in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its chairman Imran Khan roared at an election rally in Abbottabad, assuring the people that their dream of a new Pakistan had come true.

“The change is not coming,” he said in a dramatic tone. “The change has already arrived,” he declared to thunderous applause. His promise of a new Pakistan worked like a magic.

Khan’s party that had struggled since its formation in 1996 was thrust into power in KP, sweeping in a tsunami, as he would like to call it, that blew away the nationalist Awami National Party and the Pakistan Peoples Party.

New to power politics, the PTI struggled in the initial stages, looking for a leader to head its nascent government in the province, triggering a tug of war between Pervez Khattak, a relatively new entrant and veteran of party switchovers, and Qaisar Asad, an old party leader.

But before the struggle could get vicious and allow the JUI (F), a major opposition party, to pull the rug from underneath the PTI’s feet with the help of the other opposition groups, including the PML-N, PPP and ANP, Imran Khan, still controlling the party from his bed at Shaukat Khanum, intervened. The lanky Khattak from Nowshera was assigned the task of forming a coalition government. Qaisar was named the Speaker.

The government that came into being was an unlikely coalition of ideological partners. The PTI’s decision to team up with Aftab Sherpao’s Qaumi Watan Party and Jamaat-i-Islami drew immediate criticism.

This wasn’t the change Khan had promised by joining hands with a party with a tainted past and a right-wing party that had its eyes on the all-important education department to pursue its own agenda in terms of changing the syllabus to refocus on, among other things, the Jihad.

Signs of nervousness were obvious from the word go. A party that had claimed to have done its homework to bring about the much-needed change seemed lost and least prepared for the much-hyped revolution.

Before the bureaucracy could catch its breath, a horde of briefcase-clutching consultants descended on Peshawar with all sorts of assorted ideas — a phenomenon that continues to this date, bringing governance to a standstill in restive KP.

If this was not enough, Khan’s style of managing the affairs of the government — not the party, mind you — by remote control meant that the bureaucracy looked for strategic policy direction and decisions to his farmhouse in Bani Gala than the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House in Peshawar.

To make matters more difficult for his hand-picked chief minister, Khan brought in his own in the Civil Secretariat to head the bureaucracy in KP. This resulted in an uneasy relationship between the bespectacled chief minister and his chief secretary, often warranting a direct intervention from Khan’s trouble-shooter for KP, Jehangir Khan Tareen.

But as the PTI-led coalition began to find its feet, the behemoth of militant attacks hit back with a vengeance. Shocked, the PTI, which was long seen by its detractors as being soft on militants or pro-Taliban, went further into defensive gear, calling militants as “our own people”.

Political interference in police affairs coupled with PTI’s gung-ho policy on militants targeting the law enforcers, caused deep demoralisation. As the law and order situation worsened, the government stepped up its calls for talks with the militants, prompting its political opponents to accuse the PTI leadership of bending backwards to please the Taliban.

The brazen attack on Dera Ismail Khan Central Prison in July, freeing more than a couple of hundred prisoners besides killing a few inmates, caused further embarrassment to a government that already had been tipped off about the assault.

But it was not just the law and order situation that the government struggled to bring under control, its efforts to introduce some sort of supervisory role for consultants to weed out corruption caused a hiatus of six precious months in terms of development work. Only now, has the government been able to introduce guidelines for consultants.

Rumours of corruption, however, began to do the rounds soon enough, with some pointing the accusing fingers at certain ministers and advisors. In a surprising move, the PTI chairman directed Chief Minister Khattak to sack two QWP ministers and sever coalition with Sherpao’s party. No action was, however, taken against PTI-affiliated ministers and advisors accused of indulging in corruption.

This was not all. In order to put a quite rebellion within its ranks and accommodate all, the government, in addition to the cabinet, in an unprecedented step appointed 32 parliamentary secretaries and six special assistants to the chief minister with all the perks and privileges.

Seven months on, the PTI-led coalition is still looking for a direction, failing to introduce the much-needed social sector reforms. But to its credit, the government did take the lead in introducing a progressive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Act, which, experts believe, was one of the best in the world and the best piece of legislation in the country.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission Bill, 2013, is another important piece of legislation awaiting passage from the Provincial Assembly, which would make KP the first province to make its own accountability law.

Health sector reforms, particularly in public-sector hospitals to provide quality healthcare, are yet to see the light of the day though. Only two meetings of the working group formed to introduce such reforms have taken place. But the introduction of Rs1 billion free treatment package for the critically ill and the yet-to-be-implemented Rs700 million funds for free treatment of cancer patients could be cited as major steps.

The launch of enrolled drive that brought in 300,000 students to schools this year was billed a major success. Changing medium of education from Urdu to English at the first grade from March next year was also hailed as a major stride to improve the quality of education.

But political interference in transfers and postings of teachers also continued unabated. Also, it has yet to pass a law to make education mandatory for all, which is a constitutional obligation.

It was also the first province to introduce a new legislation on local government that would lead to thousands of elected village councils. The setting up of a Water and Sanitation Services Authority has also been approved.

PTI’s performance in KP in the last seven months may not be very inspiring for a party that had promised the moon, but it certainly is not long enough a period to give a final verdict on what has so far been a dismal performance.