POLITICS in Pakistan appears to be dead. However, this is only because of the beating it has taken. Like whack-a-mole, it pops up when least expected. The moment headlines about international events no longer take up all the oxygen in the room, the fractious world of Pakistani politics begins to draw attention to itself. It was no different this time around. Once the US-Iran saga settled into ‘deal is a-comin’’, commentary here focused on how the foreign policy successes had not translated into any relief for inflation-afflicted Pakistanis. By now, questions have multiplied about the mess that is the economy. These questions will simply grow as budget time draws closer and summer power bills multiply.
That’s not all. The impending elections in Gilgit-Baltistan and beyond have highlighted the same issues that the government and others have been at pains to ignore. Elections in GB are scheduled to be held this month, after a delay of around four months due to ‘bad weather’. Elections for around 24 directly elected seats will take place in the first week of June. Keeping precedent in mind, the electoral trend favours the party in power in Islamabad. But those on the ground are not so sure. According to them, voters tend to see the government in Islamabad as a coalition and hence expect a similar mish-mash in poll results — some form of a PML-N-PPP combine. And because the Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party (of the Aleem Khan fame) is also campaigning hard there, the guess is that it may also have been promised something. It is difficult for a couch potato to tell how much of the result will come from the voting and how much from the powers who cannot be named. Let’s not forget the rumours regarding the need to remind the PPP of its place in the system.
However, many people have worked hard to ensure that there will be questions about the election’s credibility. One party is — as expected — without an election symbol. And its leadership has been stopped from campaigning freely; Junaid Akbar was stopped while Asad Qaiser claims he was prevented from boarding a flight to the region. Such ham-handed tactics are hard to understand in a region which has rarely ever gone against Islamabad but they have strengthened the perception that the PTI is popular there.
This is not to say politics is limited to the crackdown on the PTI. Essentially, and beyond political parties, the real issue is about a state unwilling to grant space to ordinary people. Consider Azad Kashmir. Elections in the area will be held around July but the government is already worried. The discontent there is no secret, though reporting on it remains limited. The protests last year were controlled or subdued by eventually holding negotiations with protesters led by the Joint Awami Action Committee, which enjoys widespread and cross-party support. These included a change in government — a coalition government led by dissident PTI wallahs was replaced by the PPP. Many of the demands of the protesters were agreed to while implementation and negotiations continued.
The real issue is about a state unwilling to grant space to ordinary people.
However, the issue of refugee seats outside Kashmir continues to hang fire. Elections are held on these seats outside AJK, though the victors are part of the AJK legislature. The committee wants the seats abolished because the perception is that these seats are won through manipulation and that these legislators are used to make and break governments at others’ behest.
But unlike many of the other issues, it has been hard to reach an agreement on the matter. It was one of the key demands of the committee but the government was not very keen to address it. With elections approaching, the problem is becoming urgent.
Over the weekend, the two sides had carried out lengthy negotiations which ended without resolution and so far the committee’s call for a protest in the first week of June remains on the table. Whether or not there can be a breakthrough before that is unclear. The government will make an effort to talk and negotiate again but whether they can reach an understanding which satisfies both sides is unclear.
However, in each case the plotline is in many ways familiar: be it the economy overall, the general elections or election time in special regions, people want change. Change in the manner in which the economy is run; change in the way elections are managed; change in how their voice is heard and heeded. At the other end, there is the status quo. One can call it the ‘establishment’, ‘traditional parties’, electables, economic and other elites who are comfortable and averse to changing a system that affords them influence and wealth. So people are, for different reasons in different regions, growing resentful. Somewhere, the anger is suppressed and elsewhere it is apparent in protests. But instead of understanding the crisis, those in power continue to try and clamp down.
Negotiations and talks are seen as an option only when the use of force doesn’t prove effective. But this option is also selectively applied. For instance, protests in the region got out of hand when the government finally sat down with the JAAC. In GB earlier this year, the sectarian issue led to violence but the effort to hold talks later wasn’t all that successful and was overshadowed by the Iran war.
Many of us had forgotten AJK, but now it is back in the news. Soon it will be the turn of some other region in the country. It’s hard to tell which one, but the simmering continues in many places. Any place can boil over if we don’t pay attention.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2026
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