Pak PM Imran Khan’s fate hangs in balance in the face of the fiery Opposition campaign, also running out of favor with Pakistan’s Army.
The Opposition challenges Imran Khan’s chance of survival with a show of strength in the House where the National Assembly is slated to take up the no-trust motion against the ruling dispensation soon.
Fifty Pakistani parliamentarian ministers belonging to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf are not being seen in public. The express tribune said that the 50 federal and provincial ministers of the Imran Khan govt are ‘missing’. The ‘missing’ ministers could be considering other options and could very well be deserting the sinking ship.
About Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan
Childhood
Imran Khan was born in Lahore on 5 October 1952. Imran Khan, the seventh member of his family, was born on November 25, 1952, to a Pashtun family in Lahore, Pakistan. A quiet and shy boy in his youth, Imran Khan grew up with his sisters in a fairly wealthy, upper-middle-class family, receiving a privileged education. He was educated at the Aitchison College and Cathedral School in Lahore, and then the Royal Grammar School Worcester in England. There, he discovered his talent in cricket. In 1972, he enrolled in Keble College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating in 1975. A fan for college cricket at Keble, Paul Hayes, was instrumental in securing the admission of Khan after he had been turned down by Cambridge.
Later, he founded Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust in 1991, which actively worked on the research and development of cancer and other related diseases. He also founded the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research centre in 1994. He passionately pursued healthcare interests in the wake of his mother’s sudden death, who died of cancer.
Cricket Career
Khan made his first-class cricket debut at the age of 16 in Lahore. By the start of the 1970s, he was playing for his home teams of Lahore. Khan was part of the University of Oxford’s Blues Cricket team during the 1973–1975 seasons.
Imran Khan was described by the BBC as, “One of the finest fast bowlers cricket has ever seen.” ESPNcricinfo described him as, “The greatest cricketer to emerge from Pakistan, and arguably the world’s second-best all-rounder after Garry Sobers.”
Pakistan’s only World Cup-winning cricket captain was pitchforked to the centre stage after former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lost favours with the top brass of the Army.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan Niazi is a former Pakistani cricketer, who after leading the country to victory in the 1992 World Cup Final, retired from cricket and joined politics. He is the founding Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Khan was awarded ‘The Cricket Society Wetherall Award’ in 1976 and 1980 for being the leading all-rounder in English first-class cricket. He was also named as the Wisden Cricketer of the year in 1983 and received the ‘President’s Pride of Performance’ award in 1983.
He also got the Sussex Cricket Society Player of the Year Award in 1985 and served as Unicef’s Special Representative for Sports during the 1990s. Khan was inducted in the ‘ICC Hall of Fame’ on July 14, 2010.
Political Front
Imran Khan’s association with poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal and the Iranian writer-sociologist Ali Shariati he came across in his youth influenced him. Khan is described as a nationalist and a populist.
His proclaimed political platform and declarations include Islamic values, to which he rededicated himself in the 1990s; liberal economics, with the promise of deregulating the economy and creating a welfare state; decreased bureaucracy and the implementation of anti-corruption laws, to create and ensure a clean government; the establishment of an independent judiciary; overhaul of the country’s police system; and an anti-militant vision for a democratic Pakistan.
Internationally, Khan publicly demanded a Pakistani apology towards the Bangladeshi people for the atrocities committed in 1971. He called the 1971 operation a “blunder” and likened it to today’s treatment of Pashtuns in the war on terror. However, he frequently criticised the war crimes trials in Bangladesh in favour of the convicts. Khan is often mocked as “Taliban Khan” because of his pacifist stance regarding the war in North-West Pakistan. He believes in negotiations with the Taliban and the pull out of the Pakistan Army from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). He is against US drone strikes and plans to disengage Pakistan from the US-led war on terror. Khan also opposes almost all military operations, including the Siege of Lal Masjid.
His political front, which he founded in 1997, stayed submerged in Pakistani politics until he found favour with the military establishment, which began strengthening him after 2013, to counter the growing political powers of the two traditional mainstream parties led by Sharif and the Bhutto families.
The military establishment is widely known to have given its tacit approval to Imran Khan’s strength in 2016 when he organised a massive rally and threatened a lockdown of Islamabad over the Panama Papers leak which had implicated the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The rally propped Khan as a serious contender for power, who enjoyed the blessings of the all-important Pakistani Army.
In 1997, he founded his own political party ‘Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Khan contested for a National Assembly seat in October 2002 elections and served as a Member Parliament from NA- 71, Mianwali until 2007. In 2018, Imran Khan stormed to power in Pakistan by winning 176 votes.
Will Imran Khan resign? It is most doubtful he will resign. If he is out, it is more conceivable he will be ousted out of power. He is popular with the people and Pakistanis express, “People are happy with Imran Khan but corrupt people are not.” As the political storm brews in Pakistan: PM Imran Khan says he is ready with a trump card
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