Party chiefs launched their manifestos at Imperial College in London this week. No slick Anglo-American electioneering with carefully choreographed speeches and prepared questions here, this was raw Pakistani politics where missiles fire unguided.
The chiefs each had 15 minutes to speak and had been given specific questions to address, which they mostly ignored. They ran over time and had to be restrained. The evening quickly degenerated into a slanging match with personal attacks.
A panellist mocked Imran Kahn’s political ambition, calling him a “Playboy.”
His representative, Shahid Dastgir Khan, stood up and raised his hand. “I object to my leader being called a playboy!” he complained.
The PML (N) representative, Former Defence Minister Syed Ghaus Ali Shah, proclaimed rather confusingly “Contesting this election is a mistake, not contesting is a blunder, so we chose to make a mistake rather than a blunder.
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