Daily Times

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has said he is “quietly confident” of victory in a general election scheduled for July 25 and that as prime minister, he will drive an anti-corruption and anti-poverty campaign in the south Asian nation.

In an interview on Friday, the 65-year-old opposition leader, a glamorous part of the London upper crust in his younger days, also rejected impression that he was being supported by the establishment.

Oxford-educated Khan is campaigning hard on populist promises of a prosperous Pakistan that breaks away from its persistent legacy of corruption, even as he expands appeals to nationalist and religious sentiment in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation.

As prime minister, he says he will partially model his promised anti-corruption campaign and poverty reduction programmes on China, Pakistan’s traditional ally that has financed billions of dollars of infrastructure projects.

“What Pakistan has to do is follow China’s example where they lift people out of poverty,” Khan said in the interview in a private jet after a long night of campaigning in Punjab province.

Whoever wins the election will also have to navigate Pakistan’s often-fraught relations with the United States over the US-backed government’s war against Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The cricketer-turned-politician said: “I think the longer the US troops stay there, the less the chance of there being a political settlement. I think the Afghans, you know, if the US even gives a timetable of withdrawal, and then gets the Afghans on the table, and then with the neighbours also chipping in, I think that is the best chance of peace.”

A victory for Khan’s opposition party would mark a new political direction for Pakistan, which has been dominated by two parties – Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party founded by Zulfiar Ali Bhutto.

More than 20 years after Khan founded his political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the man still revered by many as captain of Pakistan’s 1992 World Cup-winning cricket team, feels the stars have finally aligned for him.

In recent years, he has mostly shed the “playboy” image of his younger days, marrying his spiritual adviser earlier this year and making public shows of devotion to Islam.

Supporters lined the roads leading to the three rallies Khan spoke at on Thursday night, swarming his entourage to fling rose petals as he entered each venue. His speeches are still peppered with cricket references but also have appeals to religious conservatives in the country of 208 million. And he has courted traditional power brokers with large followings in Punjab, the country’s largest province that is key to any general election victory.

Khan’s political fortunes were transformed last July when the Supreme Court disqualified three-time premier Sharif in a case that judges only took up when Khan threatened to paralyse the capital Islamabad with his supporters.

He also rejected increasing allegations by both the PML-N and the PPP that the country’s “establishment” is pushing politically motivated corruption cases against their leaders.

“(The) public is demanding accountability of corrupt leaders of political parties,” Khan said. “Now, each time there is an attempt to hold them accountable, they all get together and start saying it’s anti-democratic, and in this case they are saying it is pre-poll rigging.” Khan’s party has pulled ahead of others in one opinion poll and he said of his chances in the election: “I’m quietly confident that this time we’ll do it. I am hopeful, I am confident, but still, the match is not over until the last ball is bowled.”

Published in Daily Times, July 14^th 2018.