With the mounting excitement surrounding America’s upcoming election season, it is easy to forget that similar elections all over the world promise to change the global political landscape by 2013. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Pakistan, where the country’s fractured democracy is going to be facing its first uninterrupted parliamentary elections later this year. Other than the fact that the country’s incumbent Pakistan People’s Party government is the longest lasting democratic government in the country’s troubled history, this election season promises a new future for democracy in Pakistan.
Historically, Pakistan’s political climate has largely been dominated by a powerful military establishment and a rolodex of familiar feudal landlords. The last military dictator to rule the country, Pervez Musharraf, enjoyed largely unprecedented popular support after he overthrew the government of elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. The grassroots lawyers’ movement that eventually led to him stepping down was buttressed by Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party and Sharif’s Muslim League — both often accused of continuing a virulent tradition of feudalism and dynasty politics from the days of the British Raj. This election season, however, offers a new kind of politician.
The former captain of the national cricket team and renowned celebrity, Imran Khan, devoted himself to philanthropy and politics after retiring from the sport in 1992. Initially, the sport star’s popularity translated poorly to politics, but in re-cent years, his support has skyrocketed among Pakistani voters disillusioned with the Pakistan People’s Party government. Charismatic and eloquent Imran Khan’s appeal on a primal level is hard to deny. After his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (literally the “Union for Justice”) organized massively popular political rallies in Kara-chi and Lahore earlier this year, it became dear that Khan was well on his way to becoming a legitimate contender for Pakistan’s second parliamentary elections after Musharraf’s tenure. Having exchanged the cricket uniform for with a crisp white shalwar kameez and blazer, Khan seems intent on winning the elections.
Yet despite his growing popularity among the country’s urban youth, Khan has been as polarizing as he has been inspiring. He was often a target of censure for his glamorous life as a playboy during his cricket days, and the Jewish ancestry of his ex-wife Jemima Khan was a tempting target for anti-Semitic polemicists — suggesting a deeper suspicion of duplicity despite the Islamist tint of his rhetoric. Conversely, the country’s marginalized liberals find his born-again religiosity disconcerting. Tags of “Im the Dim” in the liberal media and criticism of his oversimplification of the Taliban insurgency as an expression of Pashtun nationalism (Khan being a Pashtun him-self) further muddle his image. Add to that his frequently anti-American rhetoric and his flirtations with the country’s divisive religious parties, and the concern is palpable. Khan also recently added a string of seasoned politicians from what have been the country’s most dominant political parties — the Muslim League (N) and the People’s Party under President Zardari — which led many of his detractors to question the wisdom of recruiting “old wine in new bottles” to a party which claims to stand against the status quo.
Although many suggest that the People’s Party’s deep-rooted support in the country’s rural areas may allow it to retain power for another term, or at the very least lead to a coalition government, Khan’s meteoric popularity among the middle class and the youth is inspiring even if it leads to no tangible results. In a country where the military’s popularity has risen in concert with declining faith in civilian governments, it is encouraging to see someone with no political or feudal background gather such immense support. Any hope in the corruption-sweeping revolution that Khan promises may be prematurely optimistic, but the mounting excitement surrounding the coming elections reflects a new faith in democracy among the Pakistani people. Even though Khan’s proposed policies may worry those who may find his naiveté unpalatable, there’s something to be said of the value of unadulterated celebrity in the face of entrenched establishment politics.