There are seasons in the life of a nation when irony turns into prophecy. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has entered one of those seasons. Its new chief minister does not carry the burden of a promise but the weight of a police file. Three simple numbers whisper across the record – 341, 188, 149 – each a chapter in the tale of a man now entrusted to rule. Wrongful restraint, defiance of lawful order, unlawful assembly. A trio of accusations that would shame a common citizen has now ascended the steps of the provincial secretariat.
In another age, such a contradiction would have stirred outrage. Today it passes for routine. We have grown accustomed to the sight of public power clothed in private doubt. The very parchment that accuses him of breaking the law now bends before his signature. There is no poetry in this, only tragedy. And yet, like all of our tragedies, the fault lies not in one man but in the temper of the times.
We have grown accustomed to the sight of public power clothed in private doubt.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has lived too long in the shadow of gunfire. In the last year alone, more than five hundred attacks were recorded, and still the figures rise. The soldiers of this land have fought for its soil, while the politicians have fought for its chairs. More worryingly, the war against terror has become a war against memory, and memory always loses. Into this weary stage steps a man whose name belongs both to a ballot and a case diary.
The defenders of the chief minister call the charges political. Perhaps they are. In our country, truth and motive often share the same disguise. But that argument, even if it were true, cannot disguise the discomfort of the moment. When the highest office in a province is occupied by someone who must first answer to the lowest clerk in a police station, the rule of law becomes a ghost that haunts its own house. There is something Dickensian in this paradox. The same state that demands obedience from the powerless rewards defiance in the powerful.
It would be easy to turn this into a sermon about morality, but the truth is more painful. This appointment is not a scandal born of one man’s ambition. It is the child of our collective fatigue. We no longer expect virtue. Only survival. The people who once chanted for justice now measure leadership by noise and loyalty. The line between criminal and commander has blurred, and the crowd has stopped noticing.
Yet amid this weariness, there remains a question that refuses to fade. How can a province so scarred by conflict afford a leader so entangled in controversy? Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s administration has been hollowed by years of war and neglect. Civil governance has retreated behind sandbags while the military fights on the frontier.
A government led by uncertainty cannot command faith from its own guards. When the chief minister himself becomes a symbol of doubt, what message reaches the constable in Swat or the widow in Bannu?
This is not to deny Sohail Afridi his right to defence. Every citizen deserves justice, and justice begins with process, not prejudice. If the charges are false, let him prove them false. Let the truth emerge in the open light of court, not in the smoke of press conferences. Redemption is not impossible, but it must be earned. What cannot continue is this strange marriage of accusation and authority, where a man governs his investigators and commands his judges by protocol.
There is a line in King Lear that feels written for this moment: “When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” Pakistan has turned its politics into such a stage. But even on the stage, the fool speaks the deepest truths. It is the fool who dares to remind the king of his frailty, the soldier of his mortality, and the ruler of his duty. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wounded and proud, deserves someone who listens to that voice before it is drowned by applause.
For all our anger, we must resist cynicism. It is still possible for this province to rise from its fatigue, for its leadership to reclaim the honour that once defined its mountains. That redemption will not come from slogans or security briefings but from humility, the hardest virtue in politics and the rarest in power. The chief minister has a chance to begin where others have ended: with truth, not more sloganeering.
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. She tweets @DureAkram.