NEW YORK – Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party is enjoying broadersupport today than in the 2013 election boosting its chances in theupcoming polls, according to a dispatch in American mass-circulation Timemagazine.

“The world once knew Khan as the Oxford-educated playboy who captainedPakistan to its only Cricket World Cup victory, in 1992, and marriedBritish heiress Jemima Goldsmith, a close friend of Princess Diana’s. Butafter two decades in his country’s turbulent political arena, Khan, 65, hasa real shot at running the country, ” Time Correspondent Time CharlieCampbell, wrote from Islamabad in the latest issue.At the same time, the dispatch pointed to a Gallup poll in May that gaveformer Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party a 13-point lead over thePTI.

But correspondent Campbell quoted Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert atthe Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, a think-tank, as saying, “PTIwill certainly be a force to be reckoned with in the election. (Imran) Khanhas been able to project himself, accurately in my view, as anincorruptible new type of politician who doesn’t have ties to specialinterests.”

The dispatch said, “Khan also takes solace in the fact that opinion pollscan be misleading“ as the U.S. discovered in 2016 (When President DonaldTrump won the election).

“….his showbiz charisma and his volcanic use of social media have drawncomparisons with the current occupant of the White House.”

Imran Khan was asked by the writer: Is he simply a Pakistani Trump?“Compare me to Bernie Sanders,” Khan replied, laughingly, of the theAmerican socialist politician who was also a presidential candidate in 2016but later withdrew in favour of former US Secretary of State HillaryClinton. “I’m the opposite of Donald Trump,” Imran Khan asserted in hisresponse.According to the dispatch, “Riding a wave of social-media outrage, hesuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to disqualify Sharif frompolitics. ”

“It’s a big victory,” Khan was quoted as saying. “But the struggle is nowon. The corrupt political elite is trying to protect itself.We have hit rock bottom. The poor are getting poorer, and a tiny number ofpeople are getting richer.”

In his report, correspondent Campbell cited President Trump’s first tweetof 2018 decrying the $33 billion in aid to Pakistan, and also equatingMuslims with terrorists and successfully banning citizens of fiveMuslim-majority nations from traveling to the U.S.“I found him very offensive, humiliating and just clueless about Islam,”Khan was quoted as saying about Trump. “But he did something worse: he tookthe lid off the Islamophobia, and it became a free-for-all.”

Despite his antipathy to long-standing U.S. policies, the dispatch saidKhan insisted he is “not anti-American.” He called Pakistan’s burgeoningties with China “a great opportunity.”In the dispatch, correspondent Campbell also said, “The greatest obstacleto Khan’s political career has perhaps been his personal life. After nineyears of marriage, he and Jemima Khan “who had converted to Islam for theirwedding“divorced in 2004. (The couple’s two sons live in London with theirmother.) Khan’s second marriage, to British-Pakistani journalist RehamKhan, in 2015 lasted only months. In February, he married his ‘spiritualguide,’ Bushra Maneka.”

“Khan may have spent his earlier years carousing with supermodels under thepaparazzi glare of London’s nightclubs, but the debonair playboy has had togrow up.” Khan was quoted as saying. “In England, it’s a piece of cake. InAmerica, it’s pretty easy. But here you are up against mafias. There isphysical danger.”About what a victory for Khan might mean for U.S. security interests, Khansaid, “The roots of all terrorist movements are in politics, never inreligion.”

But the dispatch said many have criticized him for not being tough enoughon the Pakistan Taliban, and critics even nicknamed him Taliban Khan, whilepointing out that he has been calling for talks with the militant groupdespite their terrorist acts.

“But for Khan,” according to the dispatch, “his nation’s role in theU.S.-led Afghanistan war has been a disaster that has cost 70,000 Pakistanilives, weakened the domestic security situation and ripped more than $100billion from the economy.”