Early political career

Initial years

Khan tearing his nomination paper for the National Assembly at a press conference; he boycotted the 2008 elections.

Khan was offered political positions more than a few times during his cricketing career. In 1987, President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq offered him a political position in Pakistan Muslim League (PML) which he politely declined. Khan was also invited by Nawaz Sharif to join his political party. In 1993, Khan was appointed as the ambassador for tourism in the caretaker government of Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi and held the portfolio for three months until the government dissolved. In 1994, Khan joined the Jamiat-e-Pasban, a breakaway faction of Jamaat-e-Islami, of Hamid Gul and Muhammad Ali Durrani. On 25 April 1996, Khan founded a political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He ran for the seat of National Assembly of Pakistan in 1997 Pakistani general election as a candidate of PTI from two constituencies – NA-53, Mianwali and NA-94, Lahore – but was unsuccessful and lost both the seats to candidates of PML (N).

Khan tearing his nomination paper for the National Assembly at a press conference; he boycotted the 2008 elections.

Khan supported General Pervez Musharraf's military coup in 1999, believing Musharraf would "end corruption, clear out the political mafias". According to Khan, he was Musharraf's choice for prime minister in 2002 but turned down the offer. Khan participated in the October 2002 Pakistani general election that took place across 272 constituencies and was prepared to form a coalition if his party did not get a majority of the vote. He was elected from Mianwali. In the 2002 Pakistani referendum, Khan supported military dictator General Musharraf, while all mainstream democratic parties declared that referendum as unconstitutional. He also served as a part of the Standing Committees on Kashmir and Public Accounts. On 6 May 2005, Khan was mentioned in The New Yorker as being the "most directly responsible" for drawing attention in the Muslim world to the Newsweek story about the alleged desecration of the Qur'an in a US military prison at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. In June 2007, Khan faced political opponents in and outside the parliament.

On 2 October 2007, as part of the All Parties Democratic Movement, Khan joined 85 other MPs to resign from Parliament in protest of the presidential election scheduled for 6 October, which General Musharraf was contesting without resigning as army chief. On 3 November 2007, Khan was put under house arrest, after President Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. Later Khan escaped and went into hiding. He eventually came out of hiding on 14 November to join a student protest at the University of the Punjab. At the rally, Khan was captured by student activists from the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and roughly treated. He was arrested during the protest and was sent to the Dera Ghazi Khan jail in the Punjab province where he spent a few days before being released.

Khan at the conference "Rule of Law: The Case of Pakistan" organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin

Khan at the conference "Rule of Law: The Case of Pakistan" organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin

On 30 October 2011, Khan addressed more than 100,000 supporters in Lahore, challenging the policies of the government, calling that new change a "tsunami" against the ruling parties. Another successful public gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters was held in Karachi on 25 December 2011. Since then Khan became a real threat to the ruling parties and a future political prospect in Pakistan. According to an International Republican Institute's survey, Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf tops the list of popular parties in Pakistan both at the national and provincial level.

On 6 October 2012, Khan joined a vehicle caravan of protesters from Islamabad to the village of Kotai in Pakistan's South Waziristan region against US drone missile strikes. On 23 March 2013, Khan introduced the Naya Pakistan Resolution (New Pakistan) at the start of his election campaign. On 29 April The Observer termed Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as the main opposition to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. Between 2011 and 2013, Khan and Nawaz Sharif began to engage each other in a bitter feud. The rivalry between the two leaders grew in late 2011 when Khan addressed his largest crowd at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore. From 26 April 2013, in the run up to the elections, both the PML-N and the PTI started to criticise each other.