Lahore, the provincial capital and second largest city, is witness to it. Life-size posters and banners line thoroughfares. Parties are holding corner meetings and door-to-door campaigns.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), of the three-time premier Nawaz Sharif, and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by the former cricket hero Imran Khan, are flexing their muscles for the July 25 poll.
Imran Khan, 65, is campaigning on promises to crack down on government corruption, enact anti-poverty programs, improve health and education and turn his country into an Islamic welfare state.
The sports celebrity-turned politician’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which means the movement for justice, is slightly ahead or just trailing its main rival, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party of deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, according to the latest opinion polls. Khan’s party is well ahead of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), once a formidable national political force.
An anti-corruption court subsequently sentenced the deposed prime minister and his daughter, heir-apparent Maryam, to long jail terms for possessing overseas properties that were worth much more than their known sources of income.
Sharif's disqualification stemmed from the 2016 so-called Panama Papers leaks that named his daughter and two sons, among international personalities, owning offshore holding companies in the British Virgin Islands. The Sharif family used the companies to buy properties in upscale London.
