Mohammed Saeed had been waiting all day. Early that morning the 27-year-old bakery worker had cycled from his home on the outskirts of Okara, a rural town in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, to the scruffy crossroads at its centre. Now, as evening came, the man he had come to see was only 100 metres away, standing on the roof of his campaign bus.
“We want to make a new Pakistan,” Imran Khan shouted. “You have to make this new Pakistan for your future.” Saeed cheered. “He’s right,” he said, “We have to make our own future.”
Okara was the third of five stops for the cricketer turned politician that day. The pace of campaigning is accelerating, as the general election in the troubled.
For more than four decades the Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) have alternated in power between periods of military rule. Now Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan Movement for Justice, offers voters a third option.
Nearly 35% of the 85 million people registered to take part in the elections are under 30 and nearly 60% under 40.
A stagnant economy, massive power shortages and extremist violence are largely blamed on the PPP, in power at the national level for the past five years.
PTI now has more funds than when Khan paid for his own campaigns in the late 1990s. A helicopter flew the candidate to the day’s first rally.
