https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44903466
Pakistan election: Imran Khan scents victory
By Secunder Kerman
Leading Pakistani opposition politician Imran Khan has told the BBC his opponents in elections next week will "lose because of their track record" when in power. Mr Khan dismissed concerns about the fairness of the elections.
"The status quo parties are suddenly saying the elections won't be free and fair. The reason is all the opinion polls show the PTI is surging… so they're already seeing the writing on the wall." Supporters of the PML-N party, in power for the past five years, and human rights groups allege the Pakistani military is "engineering" the result to ensure Mr Khan's PTI party wins.
The elections are widely seen as a contest between the PTI, and the PML-N, dominated by the family of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Mr Khan told the BBC his party's campaign was "a mission to see Pakistan rise again". The former cricketer has made fighting corruption his main policy issue. His rival, Mr Sharif, was sentenced to 10 years in jail by an anti-corruption court earlier this month, the culmination of an investigation Mr Khan pressed for. Mr Khan told the BBC he believed the trial had raised awareness of the knock-on effects of corruption. "That's how a country doesn't have the money for its expenditure, it doesn't have money for human development."
However, some analysts say that the real reason for Mr Sharif's conviction is that he clashed with the Pakistani army over foreign and security policies while in power. Mr Sharif claims the military, which has directly controlled Pakistan for nearly half its existence, is now engaged in "pre-poll rigging" in order to prevent his party being re-elected.
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http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg ... story.html#
As Pakistan prepares for elections, its powerful military appears to be meddling
By SHASHANK BENGALI and AOUN SAHI, JUL 20, 2018 | 3:00 AM, ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
Five years ago, one elected government in Pakistan stepped down to make way for another, marking the first peaceful democratic transition in a country that has been under military rule for much of its independent history.
Now Pakistan is attempting to repeat the feat. But the run-up to July 25 elections suggests that its powerful army is not done interfering in politics.
While the military generals are loath to retake power themselves — risking U.S. and international sanctions that could jeopardize their economic interests — analysts say they appear determined to keep former prime minister Nawaz Sharif out of politics.
Sharif, a longtime adversary of the generals who was removed from office last year on corruption charges, was convicted on flimsy evidence this month and sits in jail. Leading members of his party have been defecting in recent weeks to join his main rival. A news channel whose coverage was sympathetic to Sharif was mysteriously forced off the air, and rallies by his supporters have been blocked or subjected to media blackouts.
To many Pakistanis, the pattern of intimidation and manipulation is a hallmark of the army, which has staged three coups since independence in 1947 and ruled indirectly for many of the intervening years.
“The military has been trying to induce — if not death by a thousand cuts — then some kind of critical injury” for Sharif’s party, said Arif Rafiq, a nonresident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “To use an army term, they are shaping the electoral battlefield using a variety of measures that fall short of direct rigging.” The security establishment’s machinations have marred an otherwise competitive campaign in Pakistan, one that remains too close to call days before 106 million voters are eligible to cast ballots. At stake are 272 seats in the 342-member national legislature. The party that ends up with the most seats will likely select the next prime minister, who will inherit the challenges of a depreciating currency, water and electricity shortages and persistent violence by anti-government militants — although civilian leaders who try to exert authority in security matters have usually been slapped down by the army.
Sharif, the scion of a wealthy industrialist family, has been elected prime minister three times since 1990 but each time forced from office after losing a power struggle with the military. In his most recent term, which began in 2013, he irritated the generals by attempting to prosecute the former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf for treason and pursuing peace talks with rival India.
With his base in Punjab province, home to half of Pakistan’s population, he has long been the country’s most formidable political leader despite allegations since the 1990s that he has used his power to enrich his faily’s businesses.
But the feverishness of the judiciary’s current pursuit of Sharif — in a country where nearly every top politician has financial skeletons — has made even his critics sympathetic. “I wouldn’t suggest that Nawaz shouldn’t be held accountable,” said Hassan Javid, a political science professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “…But it’s incredibly selective accountability.” Last year, Pakistan’s Supreme Court banned Sharif from politics for failing to disclose how his family came to acquire four expensive apartments in London. Although Sharif was not listed as the owner, the court ruled that his conduct violated a constitutional provision that officeholders be “honest” and “truthful” — making him the only Pakistani official ever convicted under that law.
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Gautam
PS: Journalists discussions on Youtube talk about Ganja's corruption. But all Pak politicians are corrupt, so that is not important. What is important is that he is portrayed as a traitor who has business interests in India, and who automatically favours India in order to make money at the expense of Pakistan. That is the kiss of death for him.
