LONDON: A number of well-respected Pakistani business community figures in Europe are joining Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in the hope that he will bring to Pakistan the promised and much-needed change.
Imran Khan has been always popular in Europe for his cricketing exploits, especially for winning the World Cup and building the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital, but his “Tsunami” is reverberating outside of Pakistan too. The European Pakistani businesses joining Khan’s party are being led by Germany-based Syed Khurram Raza Kazmi, who chairs Pakistan Overseas Association Forum (POAF). Kazmi, who owns multiple businesses, claims that the POAF has over 200,000 registered members and most of them are supporters of Imran Khan. He said overseas Pakistanis loved Pakistan but all the major parties had let them down badly and there was no trust left in them.
Across Europe, some leading business names supporting Imran Khan are Chaudhry Muhammad Akram Minhas, President of POAF in Belgium and former Chief Organiser of PML-Q Europe, said he was joining PTI after realising that Pakistani politicians values personal benefits and were not bothered about the national interest of Pakistan. The textile entrepreneur said: “I am ready to give financial contribution to Imran Khan for helping Pakistan and I trust Khan will not swindle our trust.”
From Switzerland, Khawaja Tanweer Ahmed has announced the PTI and has assured that he will help Imran Khan financially in his endeavours to “rid Pakistan of years of corruption and the stranglehold of a tiny but privileged class calling shots in all affairs”. “Imran Khan is a clean man and he has not looted the wealth of Pakistan and that makes him different from rest of the lot,” the multimillionaire businessman told The News. Javed Iqbal, who also has businesses in Berlin, Germany, said he was bowled over by Khan’s stance on many things including reworking the political framework. “What has particularly moved me is the way Imran Khan dealt with the catastrophe that followed the floods and also the way he has not resorted to dirty ****-for tat politics in response to his opponents,” he said. “I have a Polish wife and I have tried to convince her and my children to come to Pakistan with me on several occasions but they never agreed simply because of the security situation.”
Jameel Ahmed Naveed, a property tycoon, started with following Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 70s but got disillusioned with what happened to the party in the following decades. “The one thing I’m really looking forward to about Imran Khan’s politics is his policies on tax. We just do not have any system of taxation in the country, which is why the country goes round begging foreign countries. We have to live the way we live in Europe i.e. make queues and abide by the rules otherwise Imran Khan will not be able to change anything.”
Imran Khan is coming to the UK again in a few weeks to hold a fundraiser and his party is hoping to take home at least a million pounds. In the UK, renowned philanthropist James Caan recently declared Imran Khan a final ray of hope for Pakistan and offered his support to cleanse Pakistani of corruption and mismanagement.
But Khan’s biggest backers are Amjad Khan and Iftikhar Khan, who own a multi-million pounds fast food business in UK, and have supported Imran Khan since he played cricket in England but at the same time they supported other parties too.
“Only Imran Khan deserves our support. Pakistan needs change from the rotten system and only Imran Khan can do something about that. We have a duty to help Pakistan and the right way of spending our money and lending our support is to support the only genuine drive against corruption and old politics,” they told The News. Both Khans said that UK’s small and large businesses were increasingly of the view that the established parties like PPP, PML-N, MQM and ANP were only routing to line their own pockets.
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