Daily Times

Sir: According to media reports (June 24, 2018), Imran Khan tried pacify to the encamped protesters outside his Bani Gala’ residence by reminding them how essentials electables are to winning elections.

He declared “tickets will be awarded to those who know the science of elections”. Can the Kaptaan reconcile his current volte face with the abhorrence shown to the establishment and electables in his autobiography Imran Khan, Pakistan, A Personal History.

In his own words from his autobiography, “Cash is essential for political candidates in Pakistan, who can spend a minimum of 10 million rupees in rural constituencies.

No politician in this country’s history up till then had ever beaten the establishment” p.225. (ISI’s Major-General Ehtisham) “Zamir gave me the ISI’s assessment of how many seats each party could get in the autumn elections… Sadly this has been a legacy of intelligence agencies in Pakistan, who without a proper broad based analysis, have made decisions which have proved disastrous for our country.

This was my first experience of dealing with the ISI”, pages 222-223. “Consequently a lot of potentially good candidates abandoned us. The ones that were left were turned on by the ISI; its agents either threatened the Tehrik-e-Insaf candidates or cajoled or lured them into Musharraf’s PML (Q)… Some candidates gave up altogether, telling me they could not fight the ISI. They said they would be wasting their money”.

KHALID MASOOD

Rawalpindi

Published in Daily Times, June 25^th 2018.