Islamabad:
What do Imran Khan and Bihar Chief Minister have in common? Perhaps nothing very much on the face of it but Imran khan, who believes he will be Pakistan's next Prime Minister, says he has been tracking the Bihar chief minister's political career. Speaking to NDTV's Barkha Dutt in Islamabad, the cricketer-turned-politician says he and his party have learnt a lot from Nitish's political mantras.
Here are the excerpts from the interview:
NDTV: It sounds at this moment that like almost everything is going your way, but people analyze reasons for that very differently, some say it's not so much what you have decided to do but more than almost everybody else in mainstream politics has failed that you are riding on a wave of public disaffection here is that how you see it?
Imran Khan: Well, that's one of the main reasons, people are sick of the old political parties. They have taken turns over the last 25 years and they have taken turns to fall to the deaths of bad governance. The whole thing hinges on governance. I was reading about Nitish Kumar in Bihar and the secret of success is that you provide good governance, provide enabling environment for investment, prosperity. People are happy. Here we have the worst ever governance in our history which, a side effect of that, of course is lawless terrorism and everything.
NDTV: It's interesting that you quote the example of the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar because, in India, he is widely seem to be so successful because he is basically focused on a development and governance platform and he is not really into identity politics whether of religion or region, it's being an economic and development oriented platform. Yet your critics and even other commentators who give you credit for creating this very popular movement that's following you, sometimes describe you as a radical and sometimes describe you as a conservative. They don't see you as somebody who is delivering on a development or a governance oriented programme platform. What would you say to that?
Imran Khan: But you know, when I came into politics, this whole thing about radicalisation or being radical, this is only recent, this is since the war on terror that I took a stand firmly that we should not have military operations. We cannot beat terrorism through military operations. I always felt that it's winning the people over to your side, it's a heart and mind war, it's isolating the terrorist rather than the insanity where we have military operations, collateral damage and we created the Pakistani Taliban. There were no Taliban in Pakistan before. But my main platform, when I came into politics, was governance. I came in on an anti-corruption platform and in 1997, when I started party, my main object was we cannot prosper until we fight corruption through good governance. So actually it goes back to Nitish Kumar, because we just unveiled our economic agenda. We had three months of deliberation. All the top economists we could find, we consulted with them and we have come up with this economic agenda we just announced last week, and actually it is very similar to what Nitish Kumar did in Bihar, because when I read his book, exactly the same steps were taken which we intent to take.
NDTV: So you sense parallels in a sense there, and you do see yourself as forming your politics around in anti-corruption, pro-economic development platform essentially.
Imran Khan: Well, corruption is a symptom of poor governance. So basically if you fix your government system, actually the difference between developed world and the third world is governance. So, Nitish Kumar government was clean government, transparent. We are the only party in Pakistan where all our central executive members have declared their assets and we put them on our website, and that's what Nitish Kumar did.
Here are the excerpts from the interview:
NDTV: It sounds at this moment that like almost everything is going your way, but people analyze reasons for that very differently, some say it's not so much what you have decided to do but more than almost everybody else in mainstream politics has failed that you are riding on a wave of public disaffection here is that how you see it?
Imran Khan: Well, that's one of the main reasons, people are sick of the old political parties. They have taken turns over the last 25 years and they have taken turns to fall to the deaths of bad governance. The whole thing hinges on governance. I was reading about Nitish Kumar in Bihar and the secret of success is that you provide good governance, provide enabling environment for investment, prosperity. People are happy. Here we have the worst ever governance in our history which, a side effect of that, of course is lawless terrorism and everything.
NDTV: It's interesting that you quote the example of the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar because, in India, he is widely seem to be so successful because he is basically focused on a development and governance platform and he is not really into identity politics whether of religion or region, it's being an economic and development oriented platform. Yet your critics and even other commentators who give you credit for creating this very popular movement that's following you, sometimes describe you as a radical and sometimes describe you as a conservative. They don't see you as somebody who is delivering on a development or a governance oriented programme platform. What would you say to that?
Imran Khan: But you know, when I came into politics, this whole thing about radicalisation or being radical, this is only recent, this is since the war on terror that I took a stand firmly that we should not have military operations. We cannot beat terrorism through military operations. I always felt that it's winning the people over to your side, it's a heart and mind war, it's isolating the terrorist rather than the insanity where we have military operations, collateral damage and we created the Pakistani Taliban. There were no Taliban in Pakistan before. But my main platform, when I came into politics, was governance. I came in on an anti-corruption platform and in 1997, when I started party, my main object was we cannot prosper until we fight corruption through good governance. So actually it goes back to Nitish Kumar, because we just unveiled our economic agenda. We had three months of deliberation. All the top economists we could find, we consulted with them and we have come up with this economic agenda we just announced last week, and actually it is very similar to what Nitish Kumar did in Bihar, because when I read his book, exactly the same steps were taken which we intent to take.
NDTV: So you sense parallels in a sense there, and you do see yourself as forming your politics around in anti-corruption, pro-economic development platform essentially.
Imran Khan: Well, corruption is a symptom of poor governance. So basically if you fix your government system, actually the difference between developed world and the third world is governance. So, Nitish Kumar government was clean government, transparent. We are the only party in Pakistan where all our central executive members have declared their assets and we put them on our website, and that's what Nitish Kumar did.
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