(http://www.channelstv.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/imran_khan.jpg)(http://www.channelstv.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/imran_khan.jpg) (http://www.channelstv.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/imran_khan.jpg)Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan will address an important election rally in Islamabad from his hospital bed in Lahore where he is recovering from a fall from a makeshift lift that was hoisting him onto a platform at a previous campaign rally on Tuesday. He fractured several vertebrae and broke a rib during the fall but his doctor has said he is well enough and is now stable. According to Imran Khan's doctor, Qaisar Sultan outside the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital which Khan founded in Lahore where he is also recovering, Khan is recovering gradually and his morale is also high ahead of the rally. "His health is better than yesterday. It is more stable. He is in good spirits. He is eating and talking. His morale is high. And we are very satisfied as far as his medical condition is concerned.... he can certainly, and easily, make this address. You will see it, God willing," Khan has predicted a "tsunami" of support for his party in Saturday's general election as voters, particularly urban youth, turn against the traditional grandees of Pakistani politics after years of misrule and corruption. His party could end up holding the balance of power if there is no clear-cut winner among the two main parties, as seems likely. Pakistan's most famous cricketer and perhaps its best-known playboy; Oxford graduate Khan captained his country to its only cricket World Cup victory in 1992. As a philanthropist, he founded the cancer hospital, and aided victims of a flood disaster in 2010. Charismatic and, despite his 60 years, still athletic and craggily handsome, a jump in popularity has now brought Khan the political break he craved for so long. Opinion polls have shown Khan's PTI trailing Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) in Punjab province, which, with 183 of the national assembly's 342 seats, is the key to power. The PTI may also struggle to beat the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which presided for the past five years over a near-failed economy and was widely castigated for allowing the country's Taliban insurgency to spiral out of control. However, the media's sympathetic coverage of Khan's election-rally accident, including a TV interview from his hospital bed that was set to stirring music, could sway voters seduced by the prospect of a third force in a political landscape so long dominated by the PML-N and PPP. Pakistan has been ruled by the military for more than half of its 66-year history, through coups or from behind the scenes. The likely outcome of the election is a hung parliament, where no one party commands a majority, which means there will have to be a coalition government. A senior diplomat said the military sees Khan, who has vowed to wipe out corruption, as a useful safety valve for popular anger over the graft and incompetence of the political class. A survey by the Pew Research Centre released this week found an "exceedingly grim" public mood in Pakistan, with roughly 90 per cent saying their country is on the wrong track.
Via: ChannelsTV