TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

Some fourteen years after being ousted in a military coup,  self-made businessman Nawaz Sharif has secured a resounding election victory to become Pakistan’s Prime Minister once again.

The world that the steel magnate returns to is of course a very different one to the one he left in 1999, when General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup d’etat.

Today’s Pakistan’s economy has felt the full force of the recession that has hammered the rest of the world. The rupee has been devalued to such an extent that the days when you could say ’20 rupees make one British pound’ appear to be some distant fantasy.

The people of Pakistan are still living in a third world country where running water is a luxury for most, as is the idea of getting fed.

There is no welfare system to speak or adequate hospitals either.

All the while, some of the poorest people on earth have had to endure almost daily drone strikes in Pakistan’s so-called tribal areas, and the well-heeled urban elite have learned to stay at home as terrorists strike in the country’s main cities.

Despite all this. the people of Pakistan turned up in large numbers – turnout was reported to have been 60 per cent – to put their faith in this man.

Let’s hope he doesn’t let them down.