OVER the past week, former prime minister Imran Khan has directly addressed his concerns to both the chief justice of Pakistan and the army chief. Disappointingly, he refuses to extend the same regard to the chiefs of his rival parties. Why is that so? Only he can answer. Perhaps it is ego; perhaps it is something else. But while there may be good reasons for why the PTI wishes to keep a distance from the PPP and the PML-N, it seems a little unnecessary that this distance be measurable in light-years instead of ideology and policy divergences. After all, all three parties are representative of the people of Pakistan. How many, respectively, is indeed a debatable topic, but no one can deny that each party has a stake in the country’s politics. This alone qualifies each of them to be regarded and treated by each other as legitimate stakeholders in a shared future. It is true that none of them has acted fairly towards their rivals, and all of them harbour legitimate grievances towards each other. But politics is “the art of the next best”, not settling vendettas.

That said, the concerns raised by the incarcerated PTI chief are indeed valid, but they are decidedly not new. Each of the three parties has suffered at the hands of an errant judiciary and an overreaching establishment. They have more in common with each other than they would care to admit. Though each of the three has repeatedly cast the other two as the biggest villains in the country, the truth is that all three face bigger problems that each of them individually has failed to adequately contend with. The answer has been clear all along to those who wish to see civilian rule strengthened in Pakistan: the PTI, PML-N and PPP must work together and with each other even as they build their individual political identities. It may make for a gripping political soap opera, but their feuding has not benefited the common citizen in any conceivable way. Indeed, the damage it has caused is shocking in scope. The PTI chief, as well as the leaders of the PML-N and the PPP, must acknowledge that they share common problems. There will be better outcomes if they start to talk to each other and resolve them together.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2025