It is difficult to escape the sense that the ruling elite has once again drifted into a political drama where personalities loom larger than the institutions meant to restrain them. The latest disclosures from infamous offender Jeffrey Epstein’s leaked emails to a new round of investigative reporting on former prime minister Imran Khan’s inner circle reinforce a picture of governance shaped less by deliberation than by mystique.
Epstein’s crude description of Mr Khan as a “devout Islamist” and “wacko” says more about his prejudices than Pakistan’s politics. However, it points to something real: the widening gulf between Mr Khan’s self-image as a reformist statesman and the increasingly eccentric political culture that gathered around him for years.
PTI supporters consistently dismissed claims about former first lady Bushra Bibi’s sway as caricature. But journalists and former insiders now describe a world in which spiritual authority overshadowed cabinet advice, and access to the prime minister flowed not through institutions but through his wife.
A senior minister later admitted that Bushra influenced appointments, day-to-day decisions, and even travel schedules. Former staffers went further, alleging ritual practices-raw meat, burning chillies, black-goat sacrifices-performed to dispel supposed threats. Whether these accounts are embroidered or not, the mere fact that they sit plausibly within the PTI narrative is revealing
The contradiction at PTI’s core was always there. Mr Khan rose on a populist promise of cleansing corruption and building a welfare state, yet he governed with the thinnest coalition imaginable and faced entrenched rivals in the judiciary and military.
Analysts had warned in 2018 that meaningful reform required compromise, patience, and parliamentary arithmetic, not the instant transformation his supporters expected. Instead, he drifted into the familiar trap of Pakistani populists, blaming shadowy elites while depending on them. Meanwhile, inflation soared, deficits widened, and by midterm, he admitted that his promised overhaul “cannot be delivered in one term.”
The aftermath exposed the depth of personalism in PTI’s politics. Violent clashes following Mr Khan’s arrest, including assaults on the Red Zone, showed how thoroughly the movement had fused around a single figure. Today, the party is visibly split between pragmatists seeking survival and purists demanding martyrdom. Pakistan does not lack capable people or reasonable ideas. To say it plainly, it lacks political cultures that trust institutions over personalities. The country’s future depends on recovering that balance; on insisting that governance be guided by debate rather than dreams, accountability rather than charisma. Until then, no promise of Naya Pakistan from any leader will be more than a slogan waiting to unravel. *