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Start of IK’s speech captured by me
When IK said Pakistan ke Nojawano se bat krna chahta hon That Wohoooooooo scream was by me 
It was raining too as you can see
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Lol
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waleed: I was there too. The atmosphere was electric! Imran connects to his people like no one else can. They can relate to him, respect him and believe in him. Brilliant.
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waleed: I was there too. The atmosphere was electric! Imran connects to his people like no one else can. They can relate to him, respect him and believe in him. Brilliant.
Thats awesome brother Im glad someone from GS was there too ...It was indeed electric you could feel the connection between Imran and each and everyone of us.......RESPECT for each and everyone who went there and stood in the thunder storm with IK !
it says content unavailable :(
DA check it now i have made it public
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okay guys my thoughts about the rally/jalsa
In numbers it was definitely bigger than 30th october one. They had to close the three gates because people were not able to fit in. In all honesty, I never believed 5 lac people could fit in iqbal park anyway. Its more like a 2-2.5 lac crowd.
I said it before and I will say it again. The way IK connects with his people, the youth and the old alike, its just a sight to behold. They listen to his every word intently, show incredible passion at his every word and are ready to brave the weather is a sight not seen before in my life. Its the jazba that can make miracles happen and no one should underestimate youth of pakistan in these times
All in all, a great start to PTI's election campaign. They have made equation pretty simple. 'Vote for biradris, electables, and old faces' or vote for PTI's sign. Now they need to maintain the momentum!
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I just cannot describe the goosebumps and that surreal feeling when after IK completed his speech in torrential rain, hundreds of thousands chanted 'we want change'. You just cannot script those moments. Incredible.
General Pasha who? ;)
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“@MubasherLucman: people tell me around 200,000 people were at jalsa. Foreign correspondents tell me they felt over 600,000 crowd was there. Hugeeeee”
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General Pasha who? ;)
Baaz nahin aata Pasha, phir kaam dikha gaya. :(
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http://epaper.dawn.com/2013/03/24/stories/24_03_2013_001_005.jpg
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Baaz nahin aata Pasha, phir kaam dikha gaya. :(
ISI ne phr se itna bara jalsa karwa diya :(
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oh and i was in a car that was leading a caravan of around 80 odd cars on from johar town to minar e pakistan. Arranged by geenral secretary punjab. Being in that car made us feel like leaders for brief moments :D
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good and balanced article.
PTI wins round 1 of 15](http://thespokesman.pk/index.php/component/k2/item/2739-pti-wins-first-of-15-rounds)
Imran Khan’s rally in Lahore has kicked-off the election campaign in a highly spirited way that will be difficult for his rivals to match - not just in numbers but also in vigour.
Even Hollywood would not have been able to create the ambience – a multitude of charged crowd crying hoarse with constant sloganeering, the thunder, lightning and drizzle. Men, women, the young and the old dancing on the music beat of popular songs.** Imran Khan had such a spell that everybody stayed despite rain.**
Good that Khan did not bore the frenzied crowd with policy matters that are the stuff for academics. Most of what he said was rhetoric about not lying, finishing off injustice and all those customary election slogans. But he was heard with rapt attention.
This is perhaps that advantage that Imran Khan has over his rivals. He is untested so people can believe him. Asfi Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have a huge baggage to defend from earlier government if they make similar promises. No matter how rulers think about their days in government, people always have a different memory — something that Musharraf may also find out today.
That Imran Khan has charisma may be the biggest understatement. And he has learnt the art of oratory. Political workers may come to attend the rallies of Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif but they do not come to just see them or listen to what they see. It always seems as the same old speech that they have heard Asif and Nawaz made hundred times.
Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari may roughly be of the same age as Imran Khan but somehow do not come across as the youthful ‘oldie’ Khan does. Call it beauty, his hair or charms, the way he sways crowd, particularly women and the youth nobody among the existing lot of Pakistani politicians can do that. Altaf Bhai would like to think himself a bigger star but nobody outside the remote-controlled MQM hierarchy would agree.
However, the biggest question remains how much of this will translate into electoral vote. You can give Imran Khan the credit for putting across the basic equation of the election before the public right at the start: Will the traditional ‘electables’ representing biradris, feudal and pressure groups win or the PTI will be able to sway the elections towards its mantra of ‘change.’ Of course, the PTI also tried the ‘electables’ model, in the process of winning over the likes of Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Javed Hashmi. But it’s now reverting back to popular politics - partially because it could not gather enough heavy weights. In the given situation, PTI’s best shot is if it could nudge the electoral discourse also towards its popular mode of rhetorical politics. That being the case, the beginning may not have been bad.
The electoral situation in other provinces, as we see it, is less hazy. Multiple political parties jostle for power in their respective power pockets as it is happening in Balochistan electoral situation. With MQM dominating Karachi and partially Hyderabad, the Sindh rural contest is largely about how many seat will the PPP lose to the odd mixture of nationalists, PML-N led by PML-F. The Khyber Pashtunkhwa is a total mess as five parties strive for local alliances with PTI upsetting the traditional equation. The Saraiki belt too is largely a contest between PPP and PML -N.
However, the buck stops in Punjab, especially in the central belt between Attock and Khanewal that encompasses 107 electoral seats. While the PML-Q stalwarts jump the ship, the PPP seems to have given up in Punjab. The PTI may give the PML-N run for their money in cities but as things stand today, **the PML-N dominates the rural Punjab heartland. The PTI will need to do something real creative to empower its mostly diminutive candidates here. This amounts to bringing about a revolution that might threaten the very political and social structure as it did in the 1970s. **
This is easier said than done. But it’s also not the same old Nawaz League-PPP way the electoral cookie will crumble this time. But the PTI’s rally has proved one thing: it’s a long see-saw of electoral politics from now on.
The mammoth PTI rally may have already had some impact. It will have some edge in having local alliance that particularly matters in the KP. Those who have already crossed over to other parties may become doubtful about their decisions again. The indecisive fence-sitters, for instance the Legharis, may rethink again. More important, it will reinvigorate the PTI cadres.
Even if one takes the PTI claim about having seven million members with a pinch of salt, the figure of 80,000 office-bearers is impressive. This amounts to a massive machinery that should matter in the election.
But this seems a long haul of at least 15-round contest for sure. I give the first round to PTI.
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Pakistani cricket star makes a play for Parliament - The Washington Post
LAHORE, Pakistan — As Pakistan looks ahead to a national election later this spring, the biggest wild card is shaping up to be cricket legend Imran Khan, who rallied at least 150,000 flag-waving supporters in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday.
After years of trying to gain a foothold in Pakistani politics, the shaggy-haired, ruggedly good-looking 60-year-old has finally elbowed his way into the big league. Casting himself as a populist anti-corruption crusader, he is seen as a threat to the two parties that have long dominated elections.
Khan has almost mythical status in cricket-crazy Pakistan. He was the captain of the national team that won the 1992 World Cup — the only time the country has claimed the sport’s highest prize — and polls show he is the nation’s most popular politician by a wide margin.
But it’s uncertain how effective he will be in converting his personal appeal into votes for his party when Pakistan holds parliamentary elections on May 11 — the first transition between democratically elected governments in a country that has experienced three military coups.
Much of Khan’s support has come from young, middle-class Pakistanis in the country’s major cities, a potentially influential group. Almost half of Pakistan’s more than 80 million registered voters are younger than 35, but the key question is whether Khan can get his young supporters to show up at the polling booth.
“This is going to swing the election,” Khan said in an interview before the rally. “The youth is standing with us and change.”
Khan, one of the few Pakistani politicians with a squeaky-clean image, broke into the political mainstream in the past 18 months with a message that capitalizes on widespread discontent with the country’s traditional politicians. Some are seen as being more interested in lining their pockets than dealing with the pressing problems facing Pakistan, such as stuttering economic growth, pervasive energy shortages and deadly attacks by Islamist militants.
On foreign policy, he has struck a chord by criticizing Pakistan’s unpopular alliance with the United States and controversial American drone attacks targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the country’s northwestern tribal region.
Khan’s message has helped him rally huge crowds in Pakistan’s major cities. Some people estimated that as many as 200,000 people packed into the park in downtown Lahore on Saturday, despite periods of lightning and driving rain. Lahore is the capital of Punjab, the country’s most populous province and the main battleground in determining which party wins enough seats in the National Assembly to form the next government.
“We want to clean up corruption. We want justice. We want electricity. And only Imran Khan can do it,” said Mohammed Wasim, a 21-year-old student from Lahore and one of many first-time voters attending the rally.
Khan hopes the momentum from the rally will help his party win a majority of the 272 National Assembly seats that are up for election. That would allow him to form the next government and position him to become prime minister.
— Associated Press
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Good blog post…
What are Imran Khan’s Chances?
Raza Habib RajaI will be lying, if I underestimate the PTI show in Lahore. No matter, how cynical you are, grand rallies like these never fail to impress.Imran Khan is back and with a bang.
In an eerily similar way to 30th October 2011 ( when he came out of age and announced himself as a potential political force), I once again witnessed an inspiring display of patriotism and passion. I have differed with Imran and continue to differ in terms of ideological leanings, but I do appreciate the effect he is having on urban Pakistan.Many of my close friends actually attended the rally and as I go through the pictures, I am actually impressed.
I like the fact that many of our urban middleclass professionals instead of looking towards a benevolent dictator are actually getting politically mobilized.Yes, I may have a disagreement with their choice, but I respect them for becoming politically participative.This rally, as rightly indicated by several political commentators, was a do or die thing. There is absolutely no doubt that PTI was losing steam and one of the major reasons was continuous loss of anti PPP vote to PML (N).
This particular dynamic has to be kept in mind. Although PTI and PML (N) have their own vote bank but these parties also capture anti PPP vote in the urban areas of Punjab. This anti PPP vote is generally not “committed” to any particular party but merely throws its weight towards the alternative which has a better chance of winning against PPP.I remember that in 1997, when PTI was launched, many though ideologically in line with PTI and despite respecting Imran Khan, decided not to vote for him because they feared that PPP would benefit due to “split” vote.
Many a times, I have heard individuals claiming that despite respecting Imran, they had never voted for the fear of “wasting” their vote. However, Imran’s successful rally on 30th October 2011 suddenly changed it and many who had been sitting on the fences decided to rope in.
In recent months, this kind of voter had again started to drift away as PTI remained low and PML N scored heavy by election victories. The combination of these two developments also dented PTI’s prospects with the aforementioned type of voter in Punjab. In fact, PML (N) gained a lot of ground from July 2012 to March 2013 as indicated by several surveys with the latest one actually displacing PTI from second position to third behind PPP.
This rally was extremely important to PTI to stop and then reverse this momentum in the urban areas. Imran’s timely and successful rally may have just done that. However, it remains to be seen whether this would actually translate into any sort of electoral victory.In my opinion, Imran Khan’s PTI does stand a good chance in urban Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Urban Punjab also has a sizeable youth population and by and large is ideologically conservative. However, around 100 seats come from rural Punjab where politics is all about local influences and darha bandi. These areas have remained frozen in time and as the by elections prove that May 2013 may not witness a change in the pattern.Here clearly PPP and PML (N) have the advantage. In fact, many of the recent locally influential entrants in PTI have left it and joined PML N further bolstering its electoral prospects.
Moreover the two political parties have the better organizational apparatus at the grass root level to actually mobilize and bring voters on the election day to the polling station.
To overcome this obvious disadvantage, Imran Khan may have to do what Bhutto did in 1970. His sweeping victory in 1970 dislodged many local politicians against the predictions. Bhutto travelled extensively and conducted rallies at smaller cities and even villages. But, in some ways he was acting in a political vacuum as there were no established mainstream POPULAR political parties. However, the time is short for Imran as elections are less than two months away and he will be competing against PPP and PML (N), who are well entrenched and contrary to what PTI trolls believe, are popular also.
So while my friends may yell “Tsunami” and revolution at the top of their voices, the actual reality may play out very differently.
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oh and i was in a car that was leading a caravan of around 80 odd cars on from johar town to minar e pakistan. Arranged by geenral secretary punjab. Being in that car made us feel like leaders for brief moments :D
Haha awesome I was in the car sitting with my uncle who will contest elections leading a rally from UET area all the way to Minar-e-Pakistan...With PTi flags in my hands and out of one flag i made a bandana too so much fun :D
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I really hope people were not just there for fun and they'll vote for this guy too . Nahi tu puray Pakistan ke Gee lag jani ha dubara .
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Sohaid bhai any new slogan you heard there in the Jalsa I posted the one I heard earlier