WHAT OTHERS SAY

PM’S FIRST SPEECH

The 22nd prime minister of Pakistan will have to contend with a set of circumstances that few leaders before him have had to face: familiar but significant governance and economic challenges; sky-high public expectations, especially among an ardent support base; and substantial scepticism and political opposition. If Prime Minister Imran Khan succeeds in his economic and governance agendas, all of Pakistan will be stronger for it. If Prime Minister Khan delivers credible civilian leadership, the constitutional order in the country will be strengthened. Therefore, all Pakistanis and well-wishers of Pakistan ought to wish Mr Khan the very best in his first term as prime minister, which began yesterday. Surely, however, Mr Khan has a special responsibility to his many supporters who have carried him from the margins of politics to its very epicentre. In a fiercely divided polity and an era of hyper-partisan politics, the core PTI supporter has stood by Mr Khan because of his promise that he will be a different kind of leader — modern, efficient, results-oriented and clean — to what national politics has mostly offered so far. But if Mr Khan is to deliver on even a modicum of what he has promised his many supporters, he will need to quickly pivot away from the angry, oppositional figure that he has cast himself as in politics for more than two decades. The contrast between Mr Khan’s victory speech a day after the general election and Prime Minister Khan’s first speech from the floor of the National Assembly yesterday is an unfortunate one.