LAHORE – Tensions are simmering within Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as the party’s efforts to secure the release of its founder, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, face internal criticism. The registration drive, spearheaded by K-P Chief Minister Sohail Afridi, has drawn sharp questions from party leaders who say they see no clear strategy or endgame.
“What will this registration drive achieve? If there was a plan, K-P CM should have brought it forward,” a senior party office-bearer told The Express Tribune, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The sad reality is that K-P CM does not have any plan.”
A Movement Without a Roadmap?
The criticism centers on what party insiders describe as a lack of strategic clarity. During an informal interaction, one party office-bearer said he asked Sohail Afridi point-blank to lay forth a plan after the chief minister announced the formation of a “release force” but received no reply.
Instead, the party leader added, Sohail “should have first chalked out a plan, and kept it before the party leadership for discussion” rather than exhausting party machinery with what he called an “ad lib program.”
Another office-bearer from Punjab expressed deeper concerns about the tools being employed for the registration process. According to information officially conveyed to him, Sohail’s team would be manually registering people for the movement—an approach he said raised two major concerns.
Manual Registration: Security Risks and Bogus Entries
The first concern, the office-bearer said, was that manual registration could effectively create a list for police to target PTI supporters by obtaining data from party camps. Given the ongoing crackdown on PTI workers and leaders, such a database could be used to identify and harass party loyalists.
The second concern was the likelihood of bogus entries, as there was no mechanism to verify registrations. Without a digital verification system, the registration drive could be infiltrated by those seeking to undermine the movement or inflate numbers artificially.
He added that the party’s official Rabta App was already down and, according to his information, no new application had been developed to handle such a large-scale exercise. “The party had advised the CM team to seek expertise from those within the party who had previously conducted such registration drives,” he said, but this advice “fell on deaf ears.”
Trust Issues Within the Party
The office-bearer further claimed that Sohail Afridi was fast losing the trust of PTI leaders, who increasingly viewed him as “an all-talk, no-action person.” The criticism suggests growing frustration within party ranks about the leadership of the release movement and the perceived lack of concrete progress.
While Sohail Afridi has been vocal about his commitment to securing Imran Khan’s release, party insiders say the gap between rhetoric and action is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
TTAP: Not Yet Taken into Confidence
The Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Ain-e-Pakistan (TTAP), an alliance of opposition parties that includes PTI, has also not been briefed on the movement’s future course. TTAP spokesperson Akhundzada Hussain told The Express Tribune that the alliance had not yet been taken into confidence regarding the movement’s roadmap.
When asked whether they had been briefed on any plan, Hussain said that since this was an internal PTI matter, TTAP had so far not been taken into the loop. However, he expressed hope that the party would share its release force plan during the upcoming leadership meeting.
Official Position: Movement Progressing
Punjab Opposition Leader Moeen Riaz Qureshi, however, maintained that the Imran Khan release movement, as decided by the party around three weeks ago, was progressing. His statement reflects the party’s official position, though it does little to address the concerns raised by those questioning the strategy.
The Stakes for PTI
Imran Khan has been in detention since August 2023, facing multiple cases that his supporters say are politically motivated. His imprisonment has become the central rallying point for PTI, which has seen many of its leaders arrested or forced underground in the intervening period.
The release movement represents the party’s most significant effort to pressure the government for Khan’s freedom. But internal divisions over strategy could undermine its effectiveness at a critical moment.
Analysis: A Movement at Risk
The growing internal criticism of Sohail Afridi’s release drive reflects a deeper challenge facing PTI: how to sustain a mass movement when its leadership is imprisoned and its organizational capacity has been weakened by sustained state pressure.
The concerns raised by party insiders are not trivial. A poorly planned registration drive could indeed expose PTI supporters to state surveillance, undermining the very movement it seeks to build. The lack of a digital infrastructure for registration in an era of widespread digital surveillance is a significant vulnerability.
But the deeper issue may be the absence of a clear strategic vision. What, exactly, does the release movement aim to achieve? How will mass registrations translate into pressure on the government? What is the timeline, and what are the benchmarks for success?
Without answers to these questions, the movement risks becoming exactly what critics within PTI fear: a performative exercise that exhausts party workers without producing results.
For Sohail Afridi, the challenge is to address these concerns, build trust among skeptical party leaders, and articulate a credible path forward. For PTI, the challenge is to channel the energy of its supporters into effective action—and to do so before the internal divisions now surfacing deepen into fractures that cannot be repaired.
