Late last month, along Lahore’s leafy Mall Road, with its Edwardian landscape and magnificent Mughal architecture, upwards of a hundred thousand men, women, and children had assembled for a political rally. The crowds were uncontrollable and the excitement was palpable, as people shrugged off the mounting humidity, waiting for the man of the hour. It was nearly time for Maghreb prayers; the sun went down over the white dome of the great Aurangzeb Alamgir mosque. Cars honked, flags waved, men danced to folk tunes, women blushed under layers of foundation, and the loudspeakers were tuned to a deafening volume. All avenues leading to the venue were choked off.
Pandemonium reigned until, finally, Imran Khan arrived on the scene. Perched on his swanky black Land Cruiser, with bodyguards dangling on either side of his convoy, Khan apologetically evaded the milling crowds and fought his way to the elevated stage. Once the hum of his followers had subsided, he began, as usual, by reading brief excerpts from the Quran, before switching to tell of his earlier life as a cricketer, his feats in charity, and his loathing of corruption and fiscally dishonest Pakistani leaders. Khan’s rhetoric toward his political contemporaries has become increasingly bitter over the years. It’s hard to blame him. He’s had a long, arduous struggle in Pakistan’s politics: 23 years, to be precise.
To say that Imran Khan, Pakistan’s biggest crossover sports celebrity, is now a political sensation would be an understatement. His political program is novel, and his claim to be a tonic for Pakistan’s broken democracy appeals to the country’s disenchanted, opportunity-starved youth. With national elections looming this summer, it’s about time that the world takes this serious politician a bit more seriously.
Famed as an international cricket star and arguably one of the finest sportsmen South Asia has ever produced, Imran Khan was never clearly cut out for politics. With his vast, sturdy shoulders, his blend of Mongolian and Afghan features, and his long, flowing hair, he made his reputation as a globe-trotting ladies’ man. Tabloids in both England and Pakistan were rife with stories of his romances with high-society English girls. First there was Emma Seargent, the daughter of the affluent financial journalist Sir Patrick Seargent, and already an award-winning painter when she was introduced to Imran at a dinner party in 1982. Their paths diverged in 1986. Then he went out with the writer, columnist, and calligrapher Lady Liza Campbell, daughter of Hugh Campbell, the 6th Earl of Cawdor, followed by Susannah Constantine, a blonde fashion journalist who wrote the bestseller What Not to Wear. None of these relationships turned into a marriage, as Khan was too bounded by a hectic cricket schedule.
At almost 40, Khan retired from competitive cricket, following Pakistan’s brilliant victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup in Australia. He soon supplanted cricket with social activism, of a kind that Pakistan had never experienced before. Khan established the country’s first-ever cancer hospital: an institution endowed with state-of-the-art equipment, where free treatment was promised for the underprivileged. For a country that was home to over 100 million people, and whose health and education sectors were thoughtlessly neglected by successive military and democratic regimes, this was an important development.
Both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s leading political figures, began to suspect Khan was a potential opponent, and even went as far as offering him a major political role in their respective cabinets. But Khan, until the winter of 1994, was unconvinced that politics was an arena where he could flourish. He doubted that he had the right temperament, and the thought of addressing a sea of people was enervating. Moreover, even if he had decided to pursue politics as a serious career, aligning himself with either the Bhuttos or the Sharifs was completely out of the question. He had seen them rule irresponsibly and judged Pakistan’s leaders to be morally bankrupt.
The fundraisers for his cancer hospital proved to be an eye-opener. People turned to Khan in droves, and lent whatever their pockets could allow, encouraging his belief that politics was the way he could expand his public reach and deliver justice and good governance. Throughout the course of 1994, he met secretly with General Hamid Gul, an Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) frontman, to create a “pressure group” with a mandate to serve as a civil society watchdog and advocate for the interests of the middle class. But the partnership soon ended as Khan had a bitter falling out with the General. Khan did not want to be a doormat but to lead a political party that would threaten the status quo and bring about real social change in the country.
After nearly two years of deliberations with well-meaning generals, diplomats, senior journalists, members of civil society, amateur politicians, lawyers, technocrats, and supporters of the cancer hospital, Khan founded his political party on April 25, 1996. He named it the Pakistan Movement for Justice Party, or PTI, with an aim to transform it into a nationalist political party that espoused justice for all, quality education, affordable medical facilities, equal job opportunities, and zero tolerance for corruption. But despite Khan’s incessant campaigning to solicit public support, his party initially made no real progress.
At the National Elections in 1997, the party’s performance was dreadful: Out of a total of 207 National Assembly seats, PTI failed to win a single one. The drubbing was hardly a surprise as Khan’s party at the time had no meaningful grassroots presence. The thousands who turned up at his rallies came either to take a snapshot with him or to get his autograph; they found his political speeches both unconvincing and vague.
Five years later, at the 2002 National Elections held under General Musharraf, PTI was subjected to another routing, despite initial claims of a groundswell of support. Ayaz Amir, one of Pakistan’s leading columnists and opinion makers, blithely dismissed Khan’s aspirations to national political office: “Imran was a great cricketer, a great playboy, and a charismatic charmer. But he doesn’t have that political thing which sets bellies on fire. People respond to him with great admiration but they just don’t react to his politics.” All that bleak commentary on Khan’s sinking political career dramatically reversed over the next decade, as he kept his chances alive by hammering home a number of anti-government themes. His public speeches were no longer bromidic, and his anti-dictatorship drive struck a chord, as did his campaigns against U.S. drone strikes.
But it was Asif Ali Zardari’s rise to the presidency in 2008 that provided Khan with his first real breakthrough. The sinister Zardari earned a reputation for notorious corruption, and his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) between 2008 and 2013 led one of the most unpopular governments in the country’s history. Economically, the country was crippled: GDP growth statistics were grim; inflation was in the double digits; exports plunged steeply and widespread energy shortages incentivized capital flight. Worse, suicide bombers were on a honeymoon, targeting ordinary civilians. That feeling of perpetual gloom and despondency worked in Khan’s favour, with his party securing 35 seats and a majority in the war-ravaged Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province at the National Polls in 2013: a convincing performance, vastly improved from the party’s electorally paralyzed position a decade earlier.
Yet despite all the success of this former paparazzi king, ladies’ man, and headline grabber, the country stands divided over his suitability for the premiership. His explosive temper, erratic decision-making, vitriolic language, and knack for picking fights with political contemporaries suggest that he could possibly be another dictator-in-waiting. That, at least, is the view held by a majority of Pakistan’s English-speaking, globe-trotting liberals. Meanwhile, Khan’s growth on Twitter is phenomenal; his tweets can trigger a commotion across the country, and are panned and venerated in almost equal measure. “He is rude and surly,” says one supporter who is no longer on the Imran Khan bandwagon. “He is no different from the others, equally hungry for power,” says another.
Such commentary has gained momentum of late, because PTI has started to recruit candidates with tainted reputations, simply because they have the vote bank and are adept at the game of constituency-based politics. The recent inclusion of Amir Liaquat, a popular yet controversial TV personality who hosts a grand religious show during the month of Ramadan, has led to an outcry within the PTI camp. The religious scholar boasts of a huge following in Karachi but is widely regarded as an imposter across the country, even fighting allegations of holding a fake degree in Islamic Studies from the Trinity College and University in Spain. Tweets calling Khan power hungry began to surface soon after Liaquat’s induction.
In addition to Liaquat, there have been a number of other turncoats that PTI has absorbed without a twinge of guilt. For example, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a former Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif loyalist, and a known land baron from Multan, was graciously made the Vice Chairman of PTI by Khan prior to the elections of 2013. Qureshi claims to stem from a saintly lineage in Multan and is also accused of using his religion for political gain.
Khan’s expedient embrace of such figures has been regarded by many as treason, a breach of faith and a clear drift from his unforgiving stance against corruption. Many PTI workers who supported Khan in his years of obscurity have therefore grown increasingly disillusioned. More disillusionment followed when, earlier this year, Ayesha Gulalai, an attractive young MP from the PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, accused Khan of sending her inappropriate text messages, and demanded a parliamentary investigation into the matter. Khan, however, has repeatedly denied the allegations.
These encumbrances seem to have bothered Khan little, as he continues to feel upbeat about his prospects at the next elections, possibly slated for this July. His optimism is not out of place. The ruling PML-N, Khan’s biggest rival, is battling for its survival. Their leader Nawaz Sharif and a few of his leading Ministers were disgracefully given the axe by an emboldened Supreme Court of Pakistan, on charges of corruption, shielding of private assets, and money laundering. Furthermore, Nawaz Sharif is presently being roasted in both social media and the press for maligning the judiciary and the army. In a recent interview given to Cyril Almeida, Pakistan’s in-demand political commentator, Sharif admitted that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were carried out by terrorists from Pakistani soil, contradicting the official stance of Pakistan’s army. These anti-establishment statements have taken the nation by storm, further deteriorating Sharif’s public position at a time when the elections are only a few months away. Khan, as usual, has wasted little time in lashing out at Sharif, declaring the ousted Prime Minister clumsy and incapable of ruling the country again. He even demanded that Sharif be tried for treason.
Khan’s unrelenting onslaught against Sharif is widely suspected by local analysts to be a plot backed by the country’s leading generals. But anyone who has worked closely with Khan (or played cricket with him) knows that he only follows his own instincts, and has a reputation for stubbornness and obstinacy to boot. Khan’s rhetorical broadsides against Sharif are consistent with his longstanding animus against the former Prime Minister. They have proven politically useful, too: While harping on Sharif for alleged corruption and treason, Khan can simultaneously point to his own vindication by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In December 2017, after hearing a case that probed the funds Khan used to purchase his palatial residence in Islamabad, the Court declared the PTI leader to be honest.
Consequently, these developments have hugely revived Khan’s electoral prospects. With nearly half of Pakistan’s total electoral population falling between the ages of 18 and 40, he has a clear advantage given his popularity among young people. The country’s top generals might also lean towards the PTI, seeing Khan as the only convincing alternative to Sharif. Unlike his chief opponent, Khan is doing his best to avoid any confrontation with the military establishment. At the same time, it would be inappropriate to say that Khan is the ladla, the blue-eyed boy of the men in khakis. Khan’s mounting popularity at present is genuine, and unprecedented. He has been at his enterprising, charismatic best at most of his recent rallies, and he knows full well that a defeat in the 2018 polls will put a permanent end to the political ambitions he has been determinedly pursuing for the past 23 years.
The winds of change are currently blowing in Khan’s favour, but the real test will begin if he is elected. Will a crusading populist like Khan, who ran on combating corruption, be able to effect meaningful reform in face of all Pakistan’s entrenched interests: the intelligence agencies, the landed aristocracy, the moneyed industrialists? Or will he be co-opted by the same system he has spent his entire political career railing against? No one genuinely knows, but the answer will determine whether he can be a truly transformative figure. As Khan would know from cricket, it’s not over until the last ball is bowled.