Thirteen years ago Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to life in prison. Today he is confident of winning a historic third term at Pakistan's general election and fixing the country's most intractable problems.
Calm and collected at the end of a quick visit to Islamabad, where he addressed a hot and sweaty hotel meeting room packed with businessmen, the 63-year-old former prime minister presents himself as a statesman-in-waiting.
"Our people are very excited. They are waiting for a response from the field and things look good. They, in fact, look better than what they were in 1997," he told AFP, referring to the landslide that last swept him into power.
Businessmen and industrialists traditionally regard Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party as better on the economy than the outgoing Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and he comes back, time and again, to stressing his economic credentials for the May 11 election.
He won admiration for turning Pakistan into a nuclear power in 1998 and for building a high-speed motorway from the northwestern city of Peshawar to Lahore, his home town and Pakistan's cultural capital on the Indian border.
As the scion of one of Pakistan's richest families, in the early 1990s he privatised much of the industry that the PPP had nationalised.
He said he would forge a national consensus to fix Pakistan's crippling power crisis and repair its faltering economy, albeit without mentioning any details that might expose the limits of his promises.
"The problems of this country are gigantic. You've got to fix the problem of power, that should be the first priority. It needs a lot of resources, hard work and the right policy," Sharif said in an interview in the VIP lounge of Islamabad airport.
"About three to five years" is all that is required, he says, to fix the energy shortages which hammer businesses and make life a misery for millions.
Pakistan does not produce enough power to meet demand, and the government routinely fails to pay for the electricity it does consume. Power companies in turn cannot pay their own bills, and so supply cuts out.
But for all his promises of rapid and effective change, Sharif is no stranger to allegations of incompetence and graft.
He was first elected in 1990 but sacked three years later on corruption charges. His second term from 1997 to 1999 ended in a military coup by General Pervez Musharraf, which the public widely welcomed at the time.
