Tag: Imran Khan

(CNN)During Pakistan's national election campaign last year, Imran Khan was dismissed by detractors as a political lightweight and foreign policy novice who relied on populism and deference to the country's influential military for support. Now, just over six months into his role as Prime Minister, those claims are being tested, as Khan finds his country closer to war with its nuclear-armed neighbor, India, than at any point in the past 20 years. India blamed the attack on a Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and said Pakistan itself had a "direct hand" in it. Tensions escalated even more this week, with an Indian airstrike on Pakistani soil, followed by retaliatory measures by Pakistani forces that resulted in the capture of an Indian pilot. "In Pakistan there's nothing like aggression from India to rally the people," he said. However, Kugelman said this is a political test for Khan, who formed his own party 23 years ago. "Now the ball is in (India Prime Minister Narendra) Modi's court. "(The military is) pro-conflict. "We've seen what has happened with previous Pakistani prime ministers who have not been supplicant to military -- they haven't been able to accomplish anything," Pakistan journalist Rafia Zakaria said. And that will be a test of his relationship with the military."

Chandrababu Naidu blames the BJP's "inefficiency" for what he describes as a threat to national security in the wake of Pakistan's reaction to criticism for last week's terrorist attack in Pulwama. In comments published by ANI, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh accused BJP leaders of "belittling" India with their "petty" actions and "wrongdoing". He said he would not tolerate what he described as the "jeopardising" of national security for self-interest. Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu: Will not tolerate jeopardizing National security for self-interests. Tough action should be taken on terror attacks. It has said the presence of Jaish-e-Mohammed and its leader, Masood Azhar, in Pakistan should be sufficient proof for Islamabad to take action. "The prime minister of Pakistan has offered to investigate the matter if India provides proof. This is a lame excuse," the Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday. Likewise, on the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase, there has been no progress." Meanwhile, the Indian Army has warned parents of Kashmiri terrorists that anyone who picks up a gun in the Valley will be killed, and urged them to ask their children to surrender.

He warned the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government against testing patience of PPP jiyalas, saying if it didn’t refrain from it, the PPP would show it how “theft of vote” was avenged. He said the PPP preferred service delivery like construction of bridges over the River Indus, canal lining, road networks, subsidy to farmers and provision of employment in Thar and quality cardiac care services. He said the “selected prime minister” and the Punjab chief minister could not compete with the Sindh chief minister. He said an inept federal government was meting out step-motherly treatment to the people of Sindh who were being punished for voting for the PPP. He said Imran Khan needed to learn principles of politics before talking about principled politics and added that the finger of umpire worked in cricket and the people’s will in politics. He said those who talked about providing 10 million jobs and five million houses to people had snatched from them already available job opportunities and deprived them of shelter. “Pakistan does not have electricity, gas and investment but the federal ministers are claiming there is no price hike and advising people to be patient. Mr Bhutto-Zardari accused the government of closing water and electricity supplies to Sindh which contributed 80pc of gas produced in Pakistan. He said billions of rupees of the Sindh government had been withheld which badly affected development process. Earlier, Mr Bilawal-Bhutto visited residence of Asad Sikandar during which shops of the area were closed by the administration.

Arguably one of the best all-around cricket players in the history of the sport, skilled at both batting and bowling, Khan dominated the pitch in the 1970s and '80s. His glowing career culminated in a World Cup win for Pakistan in 1992, in which he told his team to "fight like cornered tigers," sporting T-shirts of the animal as a symbol of his tenacity. His nine-year marriage to -- and divorce from -- British socialite Jemima Goldsmith was widely reported on. "Corruption is eating away at this country like cancer. The reason the West is so far ahead is because there is law and order in place there. But some of Khan's associates and political allies also stand accused of corruption, and there is skepticism he will be able to being a clean government to power as effectively as he claims. While Khan has been a figure in Pakistani politics since the 1990s, his popularity has surged in recent years as Pakistan's middle class has grown angry and disenchanted, according to Zaidi. But Zaidi warns that Khan is a populist, and questions how much he might challenge Pakistan's restrictions on civil liberties. The country is divided into two camps, said journalist and former Pakistani ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani: those who think the military has a right to run the country and those who don't. "The groups that benefited from military rule, they don't like the political class that share this power," Haqqani said.

As a politician, he is thundering towards the election on July 25th and appears to be on the point of scoring another famous victory. Polls suggest his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), may emerge as the largest; and Mr Khan may well become the country’s next prime minister. Yet, as a pukka sportsman, can Mr Khan really be happy? The army is ensuring that the PTI enjoys privileged access to media, endorsements from powerful people and defections from rival parties. The khaki umpire Whether in the 1970s in the era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, or in the 1990s during Mr Sharif’s earlier terms, the army’s “jeep-wallahs” first endorsed and promoted pliant civilian leaders, then squeezed them when they grew too independent, and in the end got rid of them. By returning to Pakistan to face jail, Mr Sharif has turned himself from a grubby politician into something of a martyr. Nobody quite knows why the army turned against him. Mr Khan, for his part, started off posing as an anti-establishment politician, railing against the corrupt duopoly of PML-N and its rival, the Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by Bhutto and later led by his daughter, Benazir, who was assassinated in 2007. Pakistani voters may yet rebuke the generals. It has lagged ever further behind India economically and on other fronts—including cricket.

SITTING stony-faced at the back of a business-class cabin on an Etihad flight from London to the Pakistani city of Lahore, Nawaz Sharif waited patiently for his arrest on the evening of July 13th. Journalists ignored the pleas of cabin staff to stay in their seats. It had also given a seven-year sentence to Maryam. When he did decide to return, just 12 days before a general election, there was much speculation that his flight might be diverted to Islamabad to avoid possible attempts by supporters to prevent his arrest in Lahore, his hometown. It may have helped that there had been an intense crackdown on Mr Sharif’s supporters in Lahore. Around 10,000 police were deployed across the city to prevent a column of tens of thousands of his fans from reaching the airport. Mr Sharif, 68, who retains control of the PML-N, says his sentencing was part of a military-backed conspiracy to deny his party a second term in office and to take revenge on him personally for trying to limit the army’s overweening influence after he began his third stint as prime minister in 2013. He questioned how credible the election would be with the government “taking such action against our people”. “This is worse than dictatorship,” she groaned while waiting in the business-class lounge of Abu Dhabi airport. But, as Mr Sharif put it before leaving London: “These people did not even remember in their hate what stature daughters have in Pakistan.” (the late Ms Bhutto was one such: she went on to become prime minister after her father, a former prime minister, was hanged.)

Political and personal life of politicians in Pakistan can never be told apart. As what’s personal is political and vice versa, more because it gives one’s opponents to spin off the circumstances or even incidents from a bygone era of one’s life to their own advantage with instances proving to be successful. However, moral obligations bind one to not to drag one’s personal life into the realm of work, yet to do so it’s important that the same is aware of the notions of ethics and morality towards their fellows. Much like other local politicians, Imran Khan too time and again has cashed in on the life events of his biggest opponent Nawaz Sharif. Only a day ago, Khan accused the former PM of using his wife’s unstable medical condition to blackmail people and for gaining their sympathies. Regardless of Sharif’s intentions, the PTI chief has outdone himself by stooping even lower than his previous accusations. How Khan was himself was exposed by the then MQM’s Babar Ghauri should have been enough to let him taste the humiliation one faces by having it all out there for millions to know. Yet accusing someone in the absence of substantial evidence is in fact more degenerating. Yaseen Hashim Peshawar

For the first time in the country’s electoral history, the coming elections will be dominated by the aspirations of the very young in the country. They would have reached the voting age since the elections of 2013. Who are they, where are they located and what do they want from the country’s political and economic systems? There is no doubt that the military remains Pakistan’s most powerful institution. Three, Pakistan has moved towards competitive politics. The system will not be dominated by one party but by several representing different segments of the population. Those who support the MMA resent that the Pakistani state has not become Islamic. Pakistan’s population today is seven times its size at the time of the country’s birth. When Ayub Khan decided to move the capital to northern Punjab, a large number of these jobs were lost. It is important to note that this was a youth movement expressing resentment. The Pakistan Peoples Party, which also has its origin in the politics of resentment, has moved on and become a party anchored in rural Sindh.

KAMALIA: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday criticised Imran Khan for voting in favour Asif Ali Zardari's candidate for deputy chairman in the Senate elections, despite having lambasted the former president on numerous occasions. "Bilawal says that Imran uncle would again vote for the Peoples Party," he told participants at a gathering in Kamalia tehsil of Toba Tek Singh district in Punjab. "Who is Imran trying to fool?" The Punjab chief minister said that their opponents always did politics of sit-in and shutdowns. He vowed to end this politics of allegations in the forthcoming elections. Shehbaz further attacked the PTI's "negative" style of politics, saying that the Imran Khan-led party's "politics of anarchy" is a conspiracy against the people of Pakistan. "We will have to end personal conflicts, false accusations and blame games, if we are to achieve Quaid's vision of Pakistan," the acting PML-N president continued. Highlighting the progress achieved during the past five years under PML-N's tenure, Shehbaz vowed that load-shedding will be eliminated by the end of the ongoing year. Since 2013, when PML-N came to power, it has invested in thousands of megawatts of power, he said. The minister vowed that if given another chance at government, the party will bring the Metro Bus service to Faisalabad.

DIR: Awami National Party (ANP) Chief Asfandyar Wali Khan said on Thursday that decency in politics ended with the start of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan's political career. “He does not stand behind even a single thing he says,” Wali said referring to the PTI chairman’s changing statements. “Did he not say that Nawaz and Zardari are two sides of the same coin?” Wali added that Imran had asked members from his party to vote for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the recent Senate elections. According to the ANP chief, Imran had appealed to PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari to give the Senate opposition leader seat to him but was refused. Wali stressed that Imran talks of ending corruption but does not name parliamentarians from his party who were sold during the Senate elections. The ANP chief was also critical of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), stating that Pashtuns were not being given any part of it. “Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, you should not call this China Pakistan Economic but rather China Punjab Economic Corridor.”