n March 2025, the political landscape of Pakistan presents a familiar picture of unstable stability. The stand-off between the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the government-Establishment combine remains intact. The PTI stands at a critical juncture between two strategies, of confrontation and reconciliation. It appears to realise the limits of confrontation but reconciliation is still not on the horizon for it.

As Pakistan marked the first anniversary of the February 2024 elections, there were deeply contrasting and yet familiar reactions from both sides of the political divide. The Shahbaz Sharif government celebrated its one year in office, taking pride in stabilising the economy, bringing back the narrative of ‘development’ and re-establishing friendly ties with key foreign allies. The recent news on the economic front seems to somewhat justify its apparent confidence. Inflation appears to have receded to the lowest point in the decade. The PML-N government’s ‘same boat’ arrangement with the establishment remains intact. There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity including negotiations with the heads of state of China, Turkey and some Gulf countries.

For the PTI, it is a different story. The party has apparently managed to maintain its popularity a year after the high noon of February 8, 2024, when it produced a strong showing in the elections. However, one does not see any significant change on the ground. Imran Khan remains in jail. Other prominent leaders of the party, including vice chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Dr Yasmin Rashid and Senator Ejaz Chaudhary, too, remain behind bars. The PTI has often expressed its concern that its leaders and workers are being constantly targeted. Some of its workers have been tried in military courts and handed down convictions and sentences.

During the last twelve months, the PTI has been obliged to adopt a carrot and stick policy. The party remains angry. The list of PTI’s grievances is long. These include the treatment meted out to the party leadership in the wake of May 9, 2023, attacks on military installations carried out by party workers. It has consistently complained about its “stolen mandate.” It has sought redress of its grievances by challenging election results at various platforms. A year after the elections, the election tribunals have handled only 30 percent of the petitions, i.e. 112 out of 371 cases.

The superior judiciary, once seen as the final frontier of redemption for the PTI’s acts of omission and commission, has undergone a transformation during the last six months. The 26th Amendment has been passed and implemented. The Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court has become operational. The Islamabad High Court has undergone a change in its composition through the transfer of judges from the provincial High Courts. This has created new challenges for the judicial hierarchy in Islamabad. The media landscape has dulled further following the recent amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act.

In these testing times, what are the options and strategies available for the PTI? The party has been good at street agitation. Since 2011, it has produced some impressive spectacles. However, those events were led by Imran Khan, who has been in prison since August 2023. The last major attempt by the party to mount a show of street power resulted in a debacle of November 26, 2024. After that, the PTI seems to have moved away from its strategy of confrontation. It set up a committee to hold negotiations with the government in Islamabad. However, these talks did not lead to anything substantive.

During the last twelve months, the PTI has been obliged to adopt a carrot and stick policy. The party remains angry.

After the failed negotiations, the PTI sought to extend an olive branch to the establishment and the judiciary, thus bypassing the civilian government. This entailed Imran Khan’s initiative to write letters to the chief of army staff. The contents of these letters have been shared on the former’s personal account on social media platform X, which is managed by the party’s social media team. Through these letters, Khan offered an olive branch to overcome the huge deficit of trust between the parties. In one of the letters, he also chronicled his personal ordeal in jail. A few weeks ago, the media reported that some leaders of the party including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur had met with the chief of army staff.

A PTI delegation also met Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and handed him a dossier carrying details of alleged human rights violations faced by the party leaders and workers. The party has also engaged in other dimensions of the political battle, especially by becoming a party to the legal challenge to the 26th Amendment.

Meanwhile, the PTI has attempted to capitalise on its mass appeal among the Pakistani diaspora in the US, the UK and the Gulf states. Of particular interest in this regard are the Pakistani-Americans who have engaged in lobbying in Washington to get support for Imran Khan’s release. Hopes were raised about the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, which was expected to provide the much-needed pressure to achieve that goal. More than a month after the inauguration of President Trump, a tangible move in this direction has yet to materialise.

The PTI also toyed with the idea of using a strategy to cut the foreign remittances of its followers abroad. In this regard, the party urged its expatriate Pakistani supporters to stop sending remittances back home and thus put pressure on the government. Instead, foreign remittances increased in January 2025.

Not all is quiet on the internal front either. The press has reported tales of friction within the party. There are several tell-tale signs of this internal discord. The criticism of whatever happened on November 26 in Islamabad was amply reflected through the squabbles among party leaders. Ali Amin Gandapur is no more the president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter of the PTI. The firebrand Sher Afzal Marwat has been thrown out of the party. The party is struggling to keep its house in order.

In the face of internal and external challenges, the PTI has been shifting strategies. In the past, the party decided to stay out of the ‘system.’ More than a year after the 2024 elections, the PTI’s new strategy hinges on operating through the system by engaging with the government, the establishment and the superior judiciary. While the party faces the challenge of its vote bank becoming a depreciating currency, it continues to struggle to remain visible on the political stage.

The writer is the director of the political science programme at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. She is the author of In Search of Lost Glory: Sindhi Nationalism in Pakistan (Hurst Publishers, 2021)