Pakistan chooses cricket racket – NRC

Chances are that Imran Khan (65), cricket-big and former losbol, will become prime minister of Pakistan, the nation with the second largest Muslim population in the world. For more than twenty years, Khan, who has always advocated extensive social reforms, is trying to acquire the power of the government.

Thursday night, it seemed like he was going to succeed. Profits could hardly escape him. After the official results of more than 71 percent of the constituencies were proclaimed, the Pakistani Justice Movement Khans won 98 seats, twice as much as its direct rival, the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz. Yet Khan remained cautious. "As an experienced athlete, I know the game is not over until the very last ball is thrown," he said, referring to Paki-stan's hugely popular cricket. .

Khans program is ambitious, and according to some, no chance in Pakistani conservative society. From his televised speech on Thursday afternoon, where he has not yet proclaimed the final victory, but which firmly states his vision of the country, he has in view an Islamic welfare state, such as the Prophet Muhammad who 39, established in Medina in the seventh century.

Captain

As one of Pakistan's biggest cricketers, Imran Khan has been drawing the attention of the public for decades. Pakistan will never forget that he made the country, as captain of the national team, in 1992 world champion by defeating the UK: the country's strongest cricket country. world and former colonizer.

Khans' failed marriages have been the fodder for sweet stories across the country. Jemima Goldsmith, the first woman from Khans wrote on Twitter how she remembered her first election campaign. She waited anxiously for a phone call on the results. When Khan called, he said, "The result is overwhelming!" Goldsmith gasped. "But in the wrong direction," continued her husband, after which he burst out laughing in his low voice.

These were the 1997 elections, a year after the creation of the Khans party, the Pakistan Justice Movement (PTI). Khan did not come close to a serious representation in the Pakistani parliament at the time. Yet his party was already an important factor at that time. It is the PTI investigation team that provided in 1996 the first evidence of corruption of then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who entrusted him with the post of prime minister.

In his televised speech on Thursday, Khan promised to fight corruption in the highest regions of the world. power and compulsory imposition of taxes (practically no tax is paid in Pakistan). Poverty and illiteracy must be fought with force, according to Khan. "No country can prosper if it is an island populated by rich people and a sea of ​​poor people".

The youth of the Khan's base rejoice in such promises. Pakistan desperately needs change, with an economy that is far behind the possibilities, with a failing power supply and an alarming water shortage in the big cities.

But since his first steps in politics, Pakistani analysts have been wondering I want to hear. In Pakistan, the society is dominated by networks of kinship and patronage around strong leaders. Khan, according to some, lacks the vast network of worshipers both in the under layer and in the economic and administrative elite. In addition, its power base is not found in Punjab province, the center of Pakistani power, but in the Pashanian areas on the border with Afghanistan.

Metamorphosis

Especially regarding his origins, Khan became more fanatical and religious over the years. He ended his third marriage with Bushra Maneka, his pious spiritual advisor. She is veiled and Khan has not seen her face getting married. "I knew a little what it looked like through an old photo," he said in an interview in the British magazine Mail Online .

He gave the interview as an answer to the accusations that his second wife, Reham Khan, expressed in a scandalous column that she published in campaign time and in which she claimed that Khan is bisexual , uses hard drugs and has extra-marital children. There is no doubt that the profit of Khans PTI is partly due to the fall of Nawaz Sharif, who was prime minister until last year and head of the popular Pakistani Muslim League (PML). NOT). Sharif received ten years in prison for fraud. Leading members of his party moved – with supporters and all – to Khans PTI.

It is claimed that Khan has the support of the powerful army, which directs power in Pakistan behind the scenes. Although Khan denies them, he does not seem to take offense to these accusations. "You really came here because the generals wanted him," he asked tens of thousands of supporters at one of his last election meetings. Then to keep a hymn on the army.