Victorious Imran sends peace overture to India
Says must resolve Kashmir via talks after win marred by charges of rigging
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf (PTI) party chief Imran Khan, who looks set to become the next prime minister, on Thursday pledged to match every step India takes towards Pakistan with two, in his first speech after declaring victory, “thanks to God,” in a divisive general election marking only the second civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in the country.
“We want to improve our relations with India, if their leadership also wants it. This blame game that whatever goes wrong in Pakistan is because of India and vice versa brings us back to square one,” 65-year-old cricketer-turned -politician Khan said late on Thursday afternoon after his party emerged as the single largest in the National Assembly according to local media.
“This is not how we will grow, and it is detrimental to the subcontinent,” said Khan, who complained that he had been treated by the Indian media like he was a Bollywood villain .
“If they take one step towards us, we will take two, but at least we need a start.” An official announcement of the seat tally by the election commission was still awaited, more than 24 hours after polling ended.
A tally by Dawn newspaper showed PTI leading in 120 seats, shy of the 137 (out of 272 contested seats) needed for a majority in the National Assembly.
However, only 49% of the vote had been counted at the time of going to press. Jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) trailed with 61 seats and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led in 40, with the others split among smaller parties.
Khan should have no problems finding coalition partners from smaller parties and independents, observers said.
The election was marred by allegations of vote rigging levelled by the PML-N and the PPP, which said their monitors in many voting centres were either kicked out during counting or had not received the official notifications of the precinct’s results, but instead got handwritten tallies that they could not verify.
“It is a sheer rigging. The way the people’s mandate has blatantly been insulted, it is intolerable,” PML-N leader Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s brother, told a news conference as the counting continued. Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam have been jailed on corruption charges. Although PTI workers and supporters started celebrations before the final results, no statement — or even a tweet — was issued by Khan until he made the public address.
NEWDELHI: India is not surprised at the outcome of the elections in Pakistan that ended three decades of the two-party dominance of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and placed cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan at the helm.
Nor does the country expect a sudden turnaround in its testy relationship with Pakistan, analysts tracking the bilateral relationship said. According to them, the army will continue dictating Islamabad’s policy towards New Delhi. They also see friction within the coalition Khan might cobble up as well his own political posturing as a populist campaigner being tested as the political executive of the country.
Based on this, most analysts say it makes little sense for the Narendra Modi government, which is into the last year of its five-year tenure, to spend too much political capital on ties with Pakistan, considering that any negative fallout can have a huge impact on the 2019 elections.
There was no official response from the Indian government on the election of Khan as a formal announcement of the results was still awaited.
One analyst said the friction between Nawaz Sharif and the army made the writing on the wall clear. Sharif, who too enjoyed the support of the army once, and his daughter Maryam were jailed this month on corruption charges. Khan’s critics allege that he has the army’s backing, despite his own denials.
Khan, once seen as a progressive liberal, and the Cricket World Cup-winning captain of Pakistan, has undergone a major political transformation in the little over two-decade history of his political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
He has endeared himself to the army and also echoed right-wing Islamist voices on certain issues, analysts said.
“To me this is like the early days of Nawaz Sharif when he pandered to the right-wing religious elements and wrongly believed that such elements could be handled politically,” said MK Bhadrakumar, a former career diplomat who headed the ministry of external affairs’ PAI (Pakistan,Afghanistan,Iran)division.
For sure, Khan did not make any overt anti-India noises in his campaigns, and what he said on Kashmir for most part reflected the stated position of Pakistan on the issue.
“In my view, Imran Khan has ended up doing better than anticipated. Nevertheless whether this will lead to greater stability has to be seen,” said TCA Raghavan, a former Indian envoy to Pakistan.
Traditionally, the foreign and defence policies of Pakistan have larger imprints of its army, the sixth largest in the world.
“The new government in Pakistan has its hands full. The end game is unraveling in Afghanistan where the Americans are waging a war for 18 years. There is enough international pressure to snap the roots of terrorist outfits that enjoy some patronage as non-state actors. Then there are army redlines. Then there is India,” said a person who has overseen India-Pakistan policy for many years.
The election results mean little for Pakistan or the region, said strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney. “The Pakistani military will remain the puppet master calling the shots from behind the scenes,” Chellaney said.
“Imran Khan is its latest civilian puppet. Khan’s support of Islamists and his defence of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws will ensure Pakistan remains a jihadist dungeon,” Chellaney added further. What is of immense interest to India, though, will be the new civilian government’s policy towards Afghanistan. “Imran Khan spoke about the US having no role in Afghanistan. That is easier said than done,” explained Bhadrakumar.