From Hospital Bed, Pakistani ?Change? Candidate Imran Khan Aims for Victory

The front wall of Lahore?s Shaukat Khanum hospital has come to?resemble a shrine. Scores of bouquets of flowers are arrayed amid a?sprinkling of ?get well soon? cards. On the walls, posters?appear with messages ranging from the plaintive to the stirring. ?When?a leader falls,? says one, ?the nation rises for the leader.? The?object of this devotion is Imran Khan, Pakistan?s World Cup?winning?cricket captain turned politician. Just days before the end of?campaigning, Khan suffered a dangerous fall from an overloaded lift?that tipped over on its way up to a campaign-event stage. His?supporters rushed to the charitable cancer hospital he built in?memory of his late mother, and where he is now recovering from a?bloodied head, a cracked rib and three fractures.

Khan?s supporters have steadily flocked to the hospital, sometimes?staying there for hours in a solidarity vigil. ?Imran Khan will bring?change,? says Mueen Bukhari, an electrical engineer who drove?several hours from the southern Punjabi town of Rahimyar Khan. Much?like the Obama 2008 presidential campaign, the word change?has become the central?motif for Khan?s attempt to win power in Pakistan at the parliamentary?elections on May 11. ?I am 100% confident change will come,? adds?Bukhari. ?If the person at the top is sincere, then it improves things?at the grassroots.? Like many of Khan?s supporters, he?s wearied by?Pakistan?s crippling energy shortages, long-souring economy,?near daily terrorist attacks and lurid tales of official corruption.

(PHOTOS: On Pakistan?s Election Trail: Photographs by Massimo Berruti)

The lift accident happened toward the end of a grueling and aggressive?campaign where Khan was crisscrossing Pakistan, borne by a small?helicopter to six or seven events a day, rousing his supporters with?denunciations of old politicians. He has cast himself as an outsider?sweeping away an oppressive order put in place by grasping, inept and?distant politicians. The fact that he has no experience of government,?having only won one parliamentary seat in the past, adds to his?appeal. ?We?ve endured the two big parties,? says?Muhammad Shafiq,?a government clerk sipping tea at a stall in Lahore?s old city. ?Let?s try him?as well.?

The core of Khan?s supporters is drawn from Pakistan?s increasingly?assertive urban middle classes. Along with a misty hope for change,?they share his nationalism, religiosity and contempt for politicians.?His status as Pakistan?s biggest celebrity has built a cult of?personality around him. Critics deride Khan?s party as more of a fan?club than a political outfit. Young men wear T-shirts adorned with his?portrait alongside the word ?change.? His ruggedly handsome face?appears as a screensaver on smartphones carried by his fanatical fans.

Also like the Obama campaign, Khan?s appeal is spilling over into?popular culture, with a recent Lahore fashion show exhibiting tunics?patterned with his portrait, lively music videos cheering his?campaign, and even a new Bollywood-style film.

Hundreds of mostly Khan supporters have been squeezing into cinema?seats each night in Lahore to see?Chambeli, a film that shows a?fictional Pakistan ruled by cartoonish rogues with political parties?that act like a violent mafia. The heroes of the film, a group of?middle-class urban professionals, are spurred into action by an angry?speech declaimed by one of them in a high-end caf?. Nearby customers?burst into loud applause, as then does the cinema?s audience. In the?end, a tiny party promising justice sweeps to power while the?corruption politicians are hustled into jail. As the credits roll, a?young man in the audience shouts ?Imran Khan!? The audience replies?with ?Zindabad!??? the Urdu word for ?long live.?

(MORE: Behind the Story: TIME?s Aryn Baker on Imran Khan?s Chances of Becoming Pakistan?s Prime Minister)

Outside the cinema, successive members of the mostly upper-middle-class audience said the film echoed their view of Pakistan?s?politicians. ?Imran Khan will get rid of corruption,? says Omer Yunus,?21, a student. He will also, others say, inaugurate a ?new Pakistan.???New Pakistan? is the slogan of Khan?s campaign, featured in?slick television ads that show the day rising over a changed country.?Electricity is restored, venal officials stop taking kickbacks, golden?wheat fields rise and terrorism will be a scourge of the past. Khan,?as he often says himself, is selling a dream. But in that process he?may be setting higher expectations than he can meet while his voters?follow in pursuit of different and even contradictory dreams.

In the prologue to Obama?s The Audacity of Hope, he writes, ?I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different?political stripes project their own views.? Something similar could be?said of Khan?s protean politics. On one side of Lahore, sections of?the branch? upper middle class and elite say they are voting to rid?themselves of old and incompetent faces. ?And because I like him very?much,? says Asma Azhar, a 35-year-old housewife, at a trendy?restaurant. By contrast, Khan is also appealing to hard-line religious?voters in the northwest through promises to pull Pakistan out of the?U.S.-led ?war on terror? and end drone strikes.

At a large rally in the industrial Punjabi town of Faisalabad, Khan?tried to court different audiences at once. He reached out to the many?factory workers who have lost their jobs because of power shortages and a?crippled economy. At the same time, he appealed to their employers,?saying that he would cut taxes but also make a break with Pakistan?s bureaucratically dysfunctional, non-tax-collecting past. Khan also made a pledge to safeguard the?rights of religious minorities, but just the next day at a different?rally in the city of Multan,? after being accused of leading a?pro-Ahmadi agenda, ?said that followers of the minority Ahmadi Muslim?sect ? which has often been the target of religious violence ? weren?t Muslims at all. Khan?s rallies often begin with other?speakers hoarsely denouncing political dynasties and feudalism, while?his party vice chairman happens to be a beneficiary of both.

(MORE: On Pakistan?s Election Trail, the Old Feudal Elites Struggle for Votes)

During the campaign, Khan has faced stern opposition from two very?different quarters. In the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,?the pro-Taliban Islamists of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan have?led sermons in their mosque saying that it is against Islam to vote?for Khan, as he?s a pawn of a ?Jewish conspiracy.? Some conservatives?see the former playboy as a threat to their values. ?He has all these?women dancing and singing at his rallies,??says Jawad Ahmed, a thickly?bearded Lahore shopkeeper. ?This is bad for our society.?

At the same time, Khan is accused of appeasing the Taliban for wanting?to negotiate with them if he were to come to power and for refusing to?condemn them by name on the campaign trail. Unlike secular?politicians, who have suffered a series of deadly attacks, Khan and?front runner former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have been spared. On?Thursday, unknown gunmen kidnapped a son of former Prime Minister?Yousuf Raza Gilani at a campaign rally in Multan. It is suspected that?militants may have been responsible for the abduction. Nearly 100?people have been killed in a series of Taliban attacks targeting?secular candidates; they have threatened more such attacks on polling?day.

When voters line up at the polls, it is unclear how many of them will?be placing a stamp on Khan?s appropriate electoral symbol of a cricket?bat. In a tightening race, his surge over recent weeks, particularly?in the most populous Punjab province, has made the Sharif camp?nervous. Stung by a strong feeling of anti-incumbency, a campaign?crippled by security fears, and contempt for rival Sharif, some voters from?the outgoing Pakistan People?s Party are reportedly drifting into?Khan?s embrace. By some estimates, he?s fighting for second place.?Others say he could even channel a Pakistan-style ?Obama effect? and?lead a coalition to become Prime Minister.

On?Thursday night, as the campaign period drew to an end, Khan made a?final televised speech from his hospital bed. He thanked the adoring?crowds that gathered outside to demonstrate their sympathy. ?Whatever?I could have done for Pakistan, I have done,? Khan said. ?Now it is up?to you.?

MORE:?Pakistan?s Election Season Begins With Two Very Different Candidates

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hospital-bed-pakistani-change-candidate-imran-khan-aims-053059861.html

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