Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has found that issues like corruption, inflation, education and unemployment, about which
he has held many drawing room discussions over the past 15 years, are not half
as interesting as Kashmir.
“Led Zeppelin never sang a song called Inflation,
did they?” reasoned the Oxford-educated Khan. Reaching out to a wider audience
and cutting down the length of his speech to a crisp 50 minutes, he addressed a
rally attended by 100,000 people in Lahore, hoping that they would vote for him
based on his ability to deliver speeches that only render about 23.7 percent of
the audience comatose.
After suffering a humiliating defeat in the 1997
elections, supporting Musharraf’s military coup in 1999 and withdrawing support
just before the elections, receiving 0.8 percent of the
total votes cast in the 2002 elections and finally boycotting the 2008 elections, Mr. Khan is
optimistic about the 2013 elections. “We can only go up from here,” he said.
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