PAKISTAN: Regarded as a wily cricket captain during his playing days, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan appeared Sunday to have stumped his political opposition as well.
The country’s president dissolved the national assembly just hours after the deputy speaker declined to accept a no-confidence motion that would likely have seen Khan booted from office, meaning the country will go to the polls within 90 days.
Whether he gets a second innings remains to be seen.
Khan enjoyed genuine popular support when he became premier in 2018, but critics say he has failed to deliver on promises to revitalise the economy and improve the plight of the poor.
The 69-year-old’s Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was voted in by millions who grew up watching him play cricket, where he excelled as an all-rounder and led the nation to World Cup victory in 1992.
The PTI overturned decades of dominance by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) — two usually feuding groups that have now joined forces to oust him.
Khan’s vision was for Pakistan to become a welfare state modelled on the Islamic golden age of the 7th to 14th centuries, a period of cultural, economic and scientific flourishing in the Muslim world.
But he has made little headway in improving Pakistan’s financial situation, with galloping inflation, crippling debt and a feeble rupee undermining economic reform.
A deteriorating security situation, particularly since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan last year, has also happened on his watch.
– GULF NEWS