New Delhi
In 1992, Pakistan competed in the Cricket World Cup.
Team captain Imran Khan is suffering from cartilage damage in his shoulder.
He shouldn't be playing.
But he ignores it.
With cortisone injections, swallowing painkillers, Imran Khan is on the ground.
His stubbornness pays off.
Against all odds, Pakistan is crowned cricket world champion for the first time in its history.
Thirty years later, Imran Khan has remained this sportsman who hates losing.
His party, the PTI, launched a large march with a few thousand activists from Lahore on October 28.
Objective: to occupy Islamabad to force the government of Shehbaz Sharif to accept early legislative elections that Imran Khan thinks he will win hands down.
The former athlete accuses the power in place of having overthrown him in April by buying deputies from his majority, passing a motion of censure which forced him to resign.
Read alsoIn Pakistan, the fall of Prime Minister Imran Khan
On November 3, Imran Khan was shot in the leg after an attack in Wazirabad, in the east, and the procession stopped for seven days, the time for its leader to be hospitalized.
“
The Almighty saved me.
I should never have survived
,” Imran Khan told an English channel.
His determination worries some.
“
He keeps attacking the army and the ruling coalition.
He is ready to destroy everything to achieve his ends
, ”points out a former PTI executive who has remained in contact with the party apparatus.
Imran Khan accused the head of Directorate C of ISI, the counter-terrorism division of the powerful military intelligence agency, of orchestrating the assassination attempt against him.
Fractured political landscape
Worse, some demonstrators are armed.
"
At the beginning of November, I saw PTI militants in arms blocking the toll at the entrance to Lahore
", says a motorist surprised by this unusual scene in Pakistan.
This show of force comes as the political landscape is fractured.
Imran Khan and his aides have been insulting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and coalition parties like the Bhutto-Zardari family PPP for months.
Imran Khan continues to denounce a “
government of crooks
” which would be a “
mafia
” plagued by corruption and held by two families of “
thieves
”, the Sharif and the Bhutto-Zardari.
Tempers flared further after the failed assassination.
"
We will take revenge
,” said Fawad Chaudhry, one of Khan's advisers.
Shehbaz Sharif, who takes the advice of his brother Nawaz living in London, refuses to compromise.
The two men met on Wednesday and according to the Pakistani press, they ruled out any postponement of the elections scheduled for a year.
Problem: “
The government is unable to fight Imran Khan.
They don't know how to defeat him
”, points out a majority parliamentarian who adds: “
If Imran Khan and his supporters try to enter Islamabad, there will be a clash and blood will flow.
If the violence escalates and the maintenance of order collapses, the army will declare a state of emergency
.