UMT National Policy Dialogue: Constitutional constraints to achieve national demands

Editorial 

Once again, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has announced a long march towards Islamabad and a country-wide lockdown. Government circles call this announcement ‘trying to throw a spanner into the economic wheel’. This time, September 27, 2026, is the date for protests.

The PTI cult has a long history of disrupting or trying to disrupt public order in Pakistan since its 2011 Minar-e-Pakistan Lahore public meeting. The group twice attacked the capital city of Islamabad by using the provincial administrative machinery and resources of KP province, where it still rules, and the same unruly group planned May 9, 2023, the dark day when this group attacked over 300 public and state installations, including monuments of national martyrs, military headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, Mianwali Air Base, Corps Commander/Jinnah House in Lahore, and attacked military convoys on national highways. In the past, all attempts by PTI failed to garner public support, and only cult leaders and followers gathered, attacked public and private properties and ran away. All failed attempts by PTI to so-called mobilise the public against the sitting government failed miserably because this cult had lost the trust and support of the public because of the perceivable anti-state activities of the party.

Once again, PTI plans to mobilise public funds and administrative resources of KP province to launch another attack on Islamabad, but this time PTI plans something bigger than it had been trying in the past. According to available information, Chief Minister KP Sohail Afridi had meetings in Karachi with certain groups and circles who had been minting billions of dollars out of Pak-Afghan trade and smuggling that was estimated at over $3,600 annum before the Government of Pakistan clamped down on this smuggling mafia and closed down the Pak-Afghan and Pak-Iran borders for security reasons. This development ignited a hurricane against the government because this smuggling network was the lifeline of several important political leaders, mostly from KP, bureaucrats, criminal cartels and even certain journalists who had been building their empires out of this dirty money.

Interestingly, known political leaders who are link with smuggling mafias, criminal gangs, JUI-F, ANP, PTI and some smaller politico-religious parties grouped together against the suspension of these smuggling routes, and parties that had been at daggers drawn with each other came together on one agenda that is against the security forces that broke the back of the criminal-political-terrorism nexus. There is unconfirmed information available in Karachi circles that this strong mafia of the evil nexus is funding the forthcoming PTI protest of September 27, 2026.

Moreover, information coming from Islamabad claims that the UK-based House of Goldsmith is arranging global media coverage of the forthcoming protest, and some foreign media offices within Pakistan are already in contact with PTI for arrangements such as lodging, travelling with PTI politicians, covering live events and filling the social media sphere with clips of protests.

“This time, it would be a million-dollar global media campaign, and texts are already being generated for production and then publication of opinions, articles and short reports in international media,” claimed one PTI insider who looked confident that ‘PTI would launch a cruising media campaign against the government’. Such media campaigns are being planned when the public in Pakistan is under tremendous economic pressure because of daily-changing fuel prices, high rates of levies and surcharges are draining public pockets after a perceivable failure of government to expand the tax-collecting base. The easiest way of collecting money is the constant increase in the government’s share in electricity bills and every litre of fuel consumers use.

In these circumstances, the constant increase in the perks and privileges of top bureaucrats and demanding an extra 1.6 billion from public pockets to comfort the lives of bureaucrats are among the extreme displeasures shown by the public. The dreadful law and order situation in Sindh, particularly in Karachi, and the cosmetic governance, extravagance of bureaucrats and politicians in Punjab add further frustration among the public, who are not with PTI but who may not stand for the ruling parties.

The IPPs fiasco of providing over 5 billion without generating a single unit of electricity and paying for electricity units that are not available to the public at night, leaving people sleepless in oppressive weather while they pay extra bills as fuel adjustment charges, are some of the other reasons that add to the indifferent behaviour of pro-Pakistani public against anti-Pakistan elements.

It is understood that the government is ready to manage law and order during the September 27, 2026, protest, but this time it has to take extra measures because PTI is backed by mafia money, anti-Pakistan foreign media and the economic mess being faced by the public.