Imran pledges life to voters

With fireworks bursting overhead, Imran Khan vowed to transform Pakistan as he launched his campaign to become the country’s next prime minister at a huge rally in Lahore yesterday.

The 65-year-old former cricketer drew more than 100,000 supporters to the Minare-Pakistan monument, where the first official demand for an independent Pakistan was signed in 1940.

As momentum builds behind his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, supporters are hopeful that he can take the final step and seize the post he has coveted since turning his back on London high society in the 1990s and returning to his homeland to enter politics.

‘‘Today, I am launching a programme for new Pakistan,’’ he told supporters. ‘‘In Pakistan there has been one law for the powerful and one law for the weak. The weak do not have access to justice and the powerful are above the law. My life is for you. I will fight for you till the last drop of my blood.’’

Amid a surge of support for the playboy-turned-politician, however, he faces familiar insinuations about his personal life, as well as claims that he is enthrall to the military and allegations of hypocrisy for inviting into his party some of the old guard he once campaigned against.

This may be his best – and last – chance to become prime minister. The race has been thrown wide open by the spectacular demise of Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister turfed out of office over corruption charges last year and recently banned for life from holding political office. Though still popular, Sharif could be in jail by polling day, July 15.

Khan was instrumental in the prime minister’s downfall, forcing an investigation after Sharif’s children were named in the 2016 Panama papers scandal, when millions of leaked documents lifted the lid on the covert financial dealings of the world’s super-rich. Sharif is accused of looting billions of dollars from the public purse and laundering it in offshore assets, including a portfolio of luxury London property.

‘‘All he had to do was answer two questions once it became clear the Mayfair flats belonged to him: where did he get the money to buy the flats and how did the money go out of Pakistan?’’ Khan said before the rally. ‘‘Those questions have not been answered two years later, and he says it’s a grand conspiracy.’’

Sharif and his allies deny the charge and allege that he was brought down by a covert alliance between Khan and Pakistan’s powerful military, and shadowy figures of the ‘‘deep state’’. The former prime minister sneered last week that his rival was ‘‘taking orders from the top’’.

The claim was dismissed by Khan. ‘‘The Sharifs were manufactured by the army,’’ he said. ‘‘They had no political background. Nawaz Sharif was a product of General Zia [the former dictator]. So when Nawaz says the army is being biased, he means it’s being neutral, because he’s always played with his own umpires.’’ He explained: ‘‘When he used to play cricket at Gymkhana [club in Lahore] – at one time he was an aspiring cricketer – he always had his own umpire.’’

Khan launched the PTI in 1996, saying that he wanted to sweep away the endemic corruption.

– The Times

‘‘In Pakistan there has been one law for the powerful and one law for the weak. The weak do not have access to justice and the powerful are above the law.’’ Imran Khan