Imran says ISI main stumbling block in the way of removing corruption from Pak

Washington, Aug 8 : Pakistan's cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has said that the key reason why his country was not able to move out of the shackles of corruption was that the ISI was virtually running the country.

He said that the ISI's political role in the country was such that it even decides the seats (constituencies) for different political parties.

"It has a much larger role...Who runs Pakistan? Is it a small ruling elite, or is it the 160 million people of Pakistan? ... The head of the ISI who conducted the 2002 elections, who was actually distributing seats, asked me, and it was simple, if you are on Musharraf's side, then you get this many seats. So this is the biggest problem preventing Pakistan from moving past corruption," the Daily Times quoted Khan as saying in a meeting in New York

Khan said that in the 1980s, four percent of Pakisan's GDP was spent on education, which had lately come down to 1.7 percent.

"We are among the five countries which have spent the least on education. The rest are in Africa. No one asks why are you sending your kids to madrassas. You have a proliferation of madraassas because it's the only schooling kids get. They have no other option. Therefore, I'm trying to change that. I'm trying to set up the first ever knowledge city. The idea is to invite people from the private sector to make a future Oxford," he said.

Predicting a period of uncertainty in Pakistan in near future, Imran said "a lot of turbulence might occur in the next six months."

"We are preparing for elections sometime in the winter," he added.

ANI