Kousar Khan
Will the newly appointed Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa spend his tenure chasing one man’s release instead of the province’s relief? Is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa going to witness a promised change or just a new actor in the same old game?
With Sohail Afridi’s rise to power, PTI wants KP to believe a new dawn has broken. But strip away the slogans and the staged applause, the truth glares back – nothing has changed.
‘The faces rotate, but the mindset remains; the rhetoric echoes, but the intent decays. It’s the same play, the same script, only the actor has changed.’
Sohail Afridi hails from Khyber Agency, a region long scarred by militancy, drug smuggling, and lawlessness. One might have hoped that someone emerging from such an environment would value stability and rule of law. Yet Afridi’s political posture suggests otherwise: instead of reform, he appears to mirror the same confrontational style that has come to define PTI’s politics – defiance for the sake of defiance. For a leader whose constituency has long battled criminal networks and instability, sure!
For PTI, politics starts and ends with one objective; freeing Imran Khan from jail. That’s it. Their entire campaign, their entire rhetoric, every political decision revolves around this singular obsession. Ali Amin Gandapur became Chief Minister with that same promise. Now, Sohail Afridi parrots the exact same lines, as though the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa voted not for governance, but for a personal rescue mission.
So what does the public get out of this endless loyalty to one man? Where is the agenda for reform, for employment, for peace, for rebuilding institutions? What loyalty is this to the people who trusted PTI with their future?
Afridi’s first speech was screaming – confrontational, divisive, and devoid of substance. He spoke of resistance, not reconstruction. He raged against the federation but remained silent on the province’s crumbling governance, rising terrorism, and deepening poverty.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa doesn’t need another loudmouth warrior of rhetoric. It needs a leader who can bring stability to a province that has suffered the most in Pakistan’s war on terror. It needs cooperation with the federation and coordination with the security institutions, not another round of political chaos and cult politics.
Afridi may soon realize that governing KP requires far more than slogans. He will grow up and realize that the establishment does not need him, he and the province he is governing needs the establishment to keep it running, and to ensure security.
If he continues to treat the government as a stage for rebellion, KP will once again sink under the weight of PTI’s political experiments. The party that claims to stand for “justice” is a cult that rewards loyalty over merit, confrontation over competence. Afridi is simply the latest face of that cult, a different name, same mindset.
If the new Chief Minister spends his tenure chasing one man’s release instead of his people’s relief, then PTI’s so-called “government” will collapse under the weight of its own hypocrisy. KP deserves governance, not gimmicks.
And when that collapse comes (as it surely will if this course continues), it won’t be fate. It will be the inevitable result of a party that mistook personal devotion for politics and forgot that power, in the end, belongs to the people.
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