It was not really unexpected, but…
Rob Crilly in Peshawar
8:57PM GMT 25 Nov 2011
Shah Mehmood Qureshi resigned from the government earlier this year and has kept the country guessing about which opposition party he would back.
Pundits have described him as a potential “game changer” and his capture makes him the biggest name so far to join Imran Khan, who has spent 15 years trying to elbow his way between the more established parties without success until now.
“Mr Qureshi likes to keep his cards close to his chest and is keeping everything under wraps until his rally on Sunday so that he can announce it with a bit of theatre,” said a source in Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or Movement for Justice party.
The defection is the latest boost for a political leader who in the past decade has won just one seat in parliament.
In recent weeks his growing campaign has sent shock waves through the country’s political elite with a series of large rallies.
He attracted a crowd of more than 100,000 in Lahore at the end of October, transforming him from political outsider to contender in a single afternoon.
Since then analysts who dismissed his demands for a new politics, free of corruption, as naive have been forced to think again.
Yesterday, more than 15,000 people gathered outside the north-western city of Peshawar to hear Mr Khan speak on his 59th birthday.
“No political party can stop this tsunami,” he shouted through a faltering sound system that struggled against a raucous crowd that surged dangerously towards the stage at times.
“By the grace of Allah a new Pakistan is in the making. All those old political parties, all those old lies, the days are counting down until they are swept away.”
His legendary status as the captain who won the World Cup for Pakistan in 1992 and his stance on corruption has attracted large numbers of young, urban Pakistanis who have grown tired of a politics based on family dynasties and shady backroom deals.
Both President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif, head of the opposition PML-N party, have served time in prison for corruption.
However, Mr Khan has never managed to shake off allegations that he is backed by the military – a deeply contentious issue in a country where the generals retain a tight hold on foreign policy and national security.
And opponents still question whether his chaotic rallies will translate into votes.
Yesterday Mr Khan declined to confirm that Mr Qureshi would be joining his party.
But he added: “Qureshi has a reputation for being clean and free from corruption so there is only one party he can join without ruining that reputation.” Mr Qureshi resigned from the cabinet in February in the wake of the Raymond Davis affair, when a CIA contractor shot dead two men in Lahore.
Davis was eventually freed and returned to the US but Mr Qureshi fell out with his party leadership after arguing the American was not entitled to diplomatic immunity.
Just sayin…