Imran Khan’s second innings in jeopardy after second arrest

Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan, arrested for the second time in four months yesterday, faces an increasingly tough challenge in his bid to regain office in elections to be held by November.The arrest is a fresh setback for the former cricket star who whipped up popular support since ouster last year in the face of a bruising standoff with the powerful military, but has faced divisions within his party.Khan, 70, is the South Asian nation’s most popular leader, according to opinion polls. A brief arrest in May on separate corruption charges sparked deadly unrest across the country at a time of economic crisis.He has denied any wrongdoing, telling Reuters in June the military — which has ruled Pakistan for most of its history since independence in 1947 —and its intelligence agency were trying to destroy his political party.The cricket star-turned-politician predicted then that he would be jailed again, although he said he would be tried by a military court. Yesterday’s decision was from the district court in Islamabad.The military, which controls some of the nuclear-armed nation’s biggest economic institutions, has said it is neutral towards politics.Khan became the main opposition politician after being pushed out as premier in April 2022 in a controversial no-confidence move amid public frustration at high inflation, rising deficits and endemic corruption that he had promised to stamp out.The Supreme Court overturned his decision to dissolve parliament, and defections from his ruling coalition meant he lost a subsequent no-confidence vote in the parliament.With that, Khan became the latest in an unbroken line of elected Pakistani prime ministers who did not serve their full terms.He was injured when his caravan was attacked by a gunman in November as he led his supporters to Islamabad, seeking snap general elections. Khan received three bullet wounds.Long rise, sudden fallOnce criticised as being under the thumb of the generals, Khan had a falling out with the then-army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, leading to his ouster.He has said the army, now under General Asim Munir, still targets him and his party in a bid to keep him out of the elections and prevent him from returning to power. The army denies this.He says over 200 court cases have been lodged against him.The violence after his May arrest may have brought tensions to a head with the military, as his supporters ransacked army establishments in multiple cities.Some leaders of Khan’s political party quit after the violence — in what many skeptically saw as a familiar refrain: hold a press conference and renounce the party. Thousands of party workers also remain under arrest, the party says.In 2018, the cricket legend who led Pakistan to its only World Cup win in 1992, rallied the country behind his vision of a corruption-free, prosperous nation respected abroad. But the firebrand nationalist’s fame and charisma were not enough.Khan rose to power more than two decades after he launched Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), the Pakistan Movement for Justice party. Despite his fame and status as a hero in cricket-mad Pakistan, PTI languished in Pakistan’s political wilderness, not winning a seat other than Khan’s for 17 years.In 2011, Khan began drawing huge crowds of young Pakistanis disillusioned with endemic corruption, chronic electricity shortages and crises in education and unemployment.He drew even greater backing in the ensuing years, with educated Pakistani expatriates leaving their jobs to work for his party and pop musicians and actors joining his campaign.His goal, Khan told supporters in 2018, was to turn Pakistan from a country with a "small group of wealthy and a sea of poor” into an "example for a humane system, a just system, for the world, of what an Islamic welfare state is”.He won, a sporting hero at the pinnacle of politics. Observers cautioned, however, that his biggest enemy was his own rhetoric, having raised supporters’ hopes sky high.Playboy to reformerBorn in 1952 the son of a civil engineer, Khan grew up with four sisters in an affluent urban Pashtun family in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-biggest city.After a privileged education, he went on to the University of Oxford, where he graduated with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.As his cricket career flourished, he developed a playboy reputation in London in the late 1970s.In 1995, he married Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of business tycoon James Goldsmith. The couple, who had two sons, divorced in 2004. A second marriage, to TV journalist Reham Nayyar Khan, also ended in divorce.His third marriage, to Bushra Bibi, a spiritual leader whom Khan came to know during his visits to a 13th century shrine in Pakistan, reflected his deepening interest in Sufism — a form of Islamic practice that emphasises spiritual closeness to God.Once in power, Khan embarked on his plan of building a welfare state modelled on what he said was an ideal system dating back to the Islamic world some 14 centuries earlier.But his anti-corruption drive was heavily criticised as a tool for sidelining political opponents — many of whom were imprisoned on charges of graft.Pakistan’s generals also remained powerful and military officers, retired and serving, were placed in charge of more than a dozen civilian institutions. — ReutersAFP adds: Imran Khan had vowed to captain the country a second time after being ousted as prime minister last year, but his conviction yesterday has seen his chances stumped.He was being taken into custody to begin a three year jail sentence less than an hour after an Islamabad judge declared him guilty, ahead of elections due by mid-November.Khan had been expecting a conviction — he faces more than 200 legal cases which he argued were politically motivated and designed to prevent him from standing against the fragile coalition government.The charismatic 70-year-old remains wildly popular — his first TikTok video last month garnered more than 135mn views in the first 36 hours — but the survival of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is unclear without him at the helm.Most of his senior leadership are also locked away, or have abandoned the party following a major crackdown by the establishment which has vastly diminished his street power.Since he was booted from power in April 2022 by a no-confidence vote, Khan has waged a risky and unprecedented campaign of defiance against the military he blamed for stiffing his party.That anger spilled onto the streets in May after he was arrested and briefly detained in the same case, sparking three days of sometimes violent protests.The political drama has played out against a backdrop of economic freefall and dramatically increasing militant attacks, ahead of general elections due no later than October.PTI overturned decades of dominance by the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-N — two usually feuding parties that joined forces to oust him in April 2022.For years he busied himself with charity projects, raising millions to build a cancer hospital to honour his mother.He tiptoed into politics and for years held the PTI’s only parliamentary seat.But the party grew hugely during the military-led government of General Pervez Musharraf, becoming a genuine force in the 2013 elections before winning a majority five years later.Running the country proved more difficult than sitting in opposition, however.Double-digit inflation drove up the cost of basic goods, and Pakistan had to borrow heavily just to service foreign debt.Often described as being impulsive and brash, Khan draws frequently on cricket analogies to describe his political battles."I fight till the very last ball,” he said in one TV interview.