here political parties appear to be bickering over the creation of ‘new provinces,’ litigating in the courts over all kinds of issues and non-issues and cobbling together alliances against those in power, the everyday crises that define a citizen’s relationship with the state remain largely unaddressed—perhaps ignored.

The political class and the state have managed to generate confrontation and intensify existing political conflicts on nearly all fronts. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Peoples Party—coalition partners in the Centre—are engaged in an open dispute over alleged rigging in Azad Jammu and Kashmir elections. The Jamaat-i-Islami, dismissed by some as a pawn of the powerful establishment, is agitating over high petrol prices and petroleum levy. It is organising sit-ins and threatening a shutters-down strike.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is gearing up for another march on Islamabad towards the end of September. Recently, it was locked in in a standoff with the government over the treatment of its leader Imran Khan.

A debate over whether Pakistan’s four current provinces should be parcelled into a dozen or more ‘administrative units’ has been looming on the horizons.

Each of these stories has been making headlines for weeks. The question worth asking is how any of these developments connect with a citizen who is forced to pay rising electricity and fuel bills.

The AJK dispute is instructive. It has laid bare a rupture in the ruling coalition: PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto has accused the PML-N of manipulating results in the Mirpur division. He has named four constituencies where he says major irregularities took place. Several PML-N figures, including Rana Sanaullah, have linked this with PPP’s governance record. There have been several rounds of talks to keep the row from spilling onto the federal coalition’s working relationship.

On the face of it, Jamaat-i-Islami’s protest campaign sits closer to public grievances such as petroleum levy and the tax burden on lower-income households. Hafiz Naeem is trying to frame the movement around the claim that the government is extracting hundreds of billions of rupees from the poor, while barely touching the rich. The party has filed a constitutional petition against the petroleum levy.

The PTI-judiciary standoff is not focused on policy. It is about the treatment meted out to a single political prisoner. The Supreme Court’s order to move its chief Imran Khan to a private hospital and the government’s subsequent actions have consumed enormous political bandwidth. Chief Minister Sohail Afridi’s warning that public patience could run out captures just how this dispute has become less about legal process and more about a countdown to political confrontation.

None promise the ordinary citizens a prompt court hearing, a functioning police station, lower grocery bills, responsive healthcare or improved transport facilities. 

The debate over the new provinces was kicked off by the interior minister’s ‘system collapse’ rhetoric that brought under discussion proposals ranging from a dozen new units to a reported plan for 33 federating units. However, all claims in this regard remain speculative. A reset depends on constitutional amendments requiring broad consensus among major political parties—most of whom appear wary of the idea.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement is the only mainstream political party actively pushing for the proposal. The PPP insists that the matter be decided by the general public. Most PTI leaders have argued that the provincial governments should empower the local governments rather than creating new provinces.

Most prominent political conflicts in Pakistan share a structural feature: each is primarily a negotiation between the elites’ competing visions of administrative reform rather than a negotiation between the state and its citizens. None promise prompt court hearings, functioning police stations, lower grocery bills, responsive healthcare or improved transport facilities. They may reshape the balance of power among political parties or between an elected government and the establishment but rarely aim at a government by the people.

The space for dissent has narrowed. The newly introduced Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines require journalists working for international outlets to seek permission before reporting from outside Islamabad, Karachi or Lahore. The restriction has been criticised by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Amnesty International who have labelled it as a direct constraint on coverage of unrest in less-visible parts of the country. The Amnesty’s most recent report has pointed out expanded use of cyber-crime and anti-terrorism laws against journalists, activists and opposition figures to silence dissent.

For most Pakistanis, the most urgent question is not which player wins the next round of confrontation. It is whether any of them is willing to treat the state’s basic obligations to its citizens as paramount rather than marginal. Accountability to citizens should be the baseline for any governance structure and political system. Pakistan’s political system has rarely lacked energy. What it has lacked is the discipline to direct that energy towards the welfare of its citizens.

The writer heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at [email protected]. His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1.