IK LOVE

‘H e is caught,” says Imran Khan, leaning back in his armchair with the quiet satisfaction of a man who believes his biggest political rival has been found with his fingers in the till. “He is in trouble. I think he is going to find it impossible to govern Pakistan.”
Khan is contemplating the fate of Nawaz Sharif, three-times prime minister of Pakistan, and one of the most prominent politicians linked to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. According to the leaked files published worldwide this month, Sharif’s children raised £7m in loans against four flats in Park Lane, London, owned by offshore companies . Sharif denies any wrongdoing, and his son says the family never tried to conceal their assets, but Khan insists the flats were bought with money plundered from the Pakistani people.
For Khan, it feels like a vindication. It has been 20 years since one of the world’s most famous sportsmen reinvented himself as a pious political campaigner against corruption. For much of those two decades, he has been railing against Pakistan’s rulers and how they spend and stash their money in the west. “When I was living in England I saw how those ministers lived – spending £100,000 in casinos, living in palaces [when Pakistan] doesn’t have basic facilities,” he says. “That’s why I called my party
Movement for Justice.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Opposition Decide PM Connidate

Opposition Leader Khurshid Shah on Sunday called a session of opposition parties to nominate their prime ministerial candidate. The session will be held in Shah’s chamber at 10am on Monday. Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif will become his brother’s successor in Parliament and the party’s candidate for prime minister. “If you support anyone after me, I ask you to support Shehbaz Sharif,” said Nawaz during the PML-N parliamentary party meeting held at the Punjab House on Saturday. Sharif also announced that Shahid Khaqan Abbasi will be the interim candidate until Shehbaz is elected to a National Assembly seat. Schedule for the election of the new prime minister was issued y the National Assembly Secretariat today (Sunday). According to the schedule, nomination papers for the slot of prime minister can be obtained by 3pm today. The nomination papers have to be submitted back to the assembly secretariat by 2pm on Monday. National Assembly Speaker, Ay...
Read more

All in the family

There is the letter of the law and there is good politics. There is recovering from a legal blow and there is doubling down on mistakes. There are the Sharifs and there is good sense. In the days since Nawaz Sharif’s judicial ouster, the PML-N has hunkered down and devised a new political strategy: the rule of the Sharifs as far as the eye can see and potentially beyond. Or, as Saad Rafique has boasted, remove one Sharif and the party will bring a second, third and fourth Sharif to replace him. It is a political party’s right to choose its leader and in the controversial circumstances of Mr Sharif’s dismissal, it was inevitable that the ousted prime minister’s preferences would dominate the succession question. But the utter myopia of the Sharifs is dismaying and politically worrying. Three decisions the PML-N has had to make since Mr Sharif’s ouster and not one of them has been necessary or wise. The first is to instal Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as a stopgap ...
Read more