Imran Khan, cricket star who became Prime Minister of Pakistan, is vinc


The defections from his coalition reflect the growing disillusionment of many Pakistanis with high inflation, growing deficits and the perception that Khan has failed to deliver on his election promises to root out corruption.

However, it is unlikely that he will disappear completely from the political scene.

After the Supreme Court overturned its decision to dissolve parliament and ordered lawmakers to return to the lower house, an ally called the decision a judicial coup and Khan said he would continue to fight “until the last ball”.

The 69-year-old joins a growing list of elected Pakistani prime ministers who have failed to complete their terms; none have done so since independence in 1947.

In 2018, the cricketing legend, who led Pakistan to its only World Cup victory in 1992, rallied the country behind his vision of a country free from corruption, prosperous and respected on the world stage.

But the renown and charisma of the incendiary nationalist were not enough to keep him in power.

Ironically, for a politician once criticized for being under the thumb of the powerful military establishment, his ousting comes amid signs of deteriorating relations between him and army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The military, which plays a prominent role in Pakistan, having ruled the country for almost half of its history and gaining control of some of its biggest economic institutions, said it remained neutral on the Politics.

At a rally last month as he struggled for his political survival, Khan was widely seen as referring to this position when he said: “Only animals remain neutral”.

“They (the military) don’t want to be seen as supporting him and being blamed for his failures,” said opposition leader and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. “They withdrew their support.”

ENCHANTING PROMISES

Handsome and charismatic, Khan first came to world attention in the early 1970s as an aggressive, fast bowler with a distinctive leaping action.

He went on to become one of the best all-around players in the world and a hero in cricket-crazed Pakistan. He led a struggling star team to victory in 1992, urging his players to fight “like cornered tigers” with his famous battle cry.

After retiring from cricket that year, he came to prominence for his philanthropy, raising $25 million to open a cancer hospital in memory of his mother, before entering politics with the founding of his Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party, or Pakistan Justice Movement, in 1996.

Despite its notoriety, the PTI languished in Pakistan’s political wilderness, winning no seat other than Khan’s for 17 years.

This period, however, had some dramatic moments. In 2007, Khan escaped house arrest by jumping over a wall as part of then-military leader General Pervez Musharraf’s crackdown on opposition figures.

In 2011, Khan began attracting huge crowds of young Pakistanis disillusioned with rampant corruption, chronic power shortages, and education and unemployment crises.

He attracted even greater support in the years that followed, with educated Pakistani expats quitting their jobs to work for his party and pop musicians and actors joining him on the campaign trail.

His goal, Khan told a gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters in 2018, was to transform Pakistan from a country with a “small group of rich people and a sea of ​​poor people” into an “example for a human system, a fair, for the world, of what an Islamic welfare state is”.

That year, he finally claimed victory, marking the rare rise of a sporting hero to the pinnacle of politics. Observers, however, warned that his greatest enemy was his own rhetoric, having raised high hopes among his supporters.

FROM PLAYBOY TO RFORMER

Born in 1952, the son of a civil engineer, Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi describes himself as a shy child who grew up with four sisters in a wealthy urban Pashtun family in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city.

After a privileged education in Lahore, during which his talents as a cricketer were revealed, he entered the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

As his cricket career blossomed, he developed a reputation as a London playboy in the late 1970s.

In 1995, he married Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of business magnate James Goldsmith. The couple, who had two sons together, divorced in 2004. A brief second marriage to television journalist Reham Nayyar Khan also ended in divorce.

His third marriage to Bushra Bibi, a spiritual leader whom Khan had come to know during his visits to a 13th-century shrine in Pakistan, reflected his growing interest in Sufism – a form of Islamic practice that emphasizes spiritual closeness. with God.

Once in power, Khan embarked on his plan to build a “welfare” state modeled on what he said was an ideal system dating back to the Islamic world some 14 centuries earlier.

His government made a number of key appointments on the basis of qualifications rather than political favors and sought to reform hiring in the bureaucracy and the civil service.

Other measures include making it easier for citizens to file complaints and introducing universal health care for the poor in one province, with plans to expand the program nationally. The government has also launched a project to plant 10 billion trees to reverse decades of deforestation.

To prop up a crippled economy, Khan made a major policy shift by securing an IMF bailout for Pakistan and setting lofty, though unmet, targets for expanding tax collection.

But his anti-corruption campaign has been heavily criticized as a tool to sideline political opponents – many of whom have been jailed for corruption.

The Pakistani generals also remained powerful and military officers, retired or in service, were placed at the head of more than a dozen civilian institutions.



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