I genuinely don't understand what these people expect from political parties. If you want people to "fight back" then give PTI 9 billion dollars a year so they can also buy weapons, Vigos and pay 7 lakh thugs to shoot people on IK's orders...only then it could considered an equal playing field.
So basically PTI aspires to be a terrorist movement then?
PTI fans keep talking like persecution automatically makes them righteous. Persecution is real in Pakistan with PTI and well before them, but getting repressed by the state does not magically turn your movement into a democratic alternative.
The real problem is that PTI stopped looking like a political party a long time ago and started looking like a one-man grievance cult. If your entire ideology is ‘Imran good, everyone else evil,’ then that is not reform, that is fandom with political slogans.
A real party builds institutions, leadership benches, internal discipline, succession plans, and a reason to exist beyond one man’s charisma. PTI has never convincingly answered the basic post-Imran question: what exactly survives if the man is removed from the picture? the ideas, the organization, or just the rage?
Most sane people have seen the light of what is left - and that is why people call it a cult. The talking points never evolve. The evidence never matters. Every setback is a conspiracy, every critic is a sellout, every legal case is fake by definition,
and every bad PTI action is either denied, minimized, or blamed on someone else.
THIS - WE ARE THE CHOSEN ONES AND EVERYONE ELSE IS WRONG - who else says that I wonder.. . the Army? How about a certain European colony in the middle east?
Even in the May 9 cases, the serious position is ‘show evidence and give fair trials,’ because courts also acquitted more than 250 PTI activists in one case. Cultists cannot handle that standard because cults hate nuance.
And spare everyone the revolutionary cosplay about needing weapons, muscle, and private violence to ‘fight back.’ If your answer to state abuse is ‘our side should get its own thugs too,’ then you are not defending democracy then you are admitting you
worship power, just under a different logo or man...
Imran Khan is not clean just because his followers are emotionally dependent on him. He has faced multiple serious legal cases, and PTI says many are politically motivated;
both things can be true at once because the establishment is complicit in selective prosecution but a leader can still deserve scrutiny.
That is called
adult politics, which is exactly what cults reject.
The funniest part is that PTI supporters act like repeating the same three slogans is some grand ideological inheritance. Bhutto at least became ‘Bhutto zinda hai’ in this ghostly political brand that outlived the man. PTI is more like ‘Imran online hai’ who is permanently buffering, permanently raging, and completely unable to explain what the movement is
without his face on the thumbnail.
That is the difference between a flawed mass political tradition and a personality cult. One percolates into party memory, patronage networks, symbols, and succession. The other just loops clips, hashtags, and martyrdom content until people mistake obsession for structure.
So yes, condemn persecution. Yes, oppose selective justice. Yes, demand due process for PTI supporters and for everyone else too. But stop pretending PTI is some sacred vehicle for systemic change when it has spent years proving it cannot outgrow a single man, cannot tolerate internal complexity, and cannot imagine politics except as loyalty to a messiah.