Do you know both Imran Khan and Malaysia's Mahathir rode 'tsunami' to win elections?

Prime Minister Imran Khan  on Thursday concluded his two-day official visit to Malaysia.

During a joint press conference with Malaysian leader, Khan  said: " We both came to power, people gave us mandate on an anti-corruption platform, and we faced similar situations," he  said.

Few Pakistanis knew that   during its election campaign Mahathir-led coalition used "tsunami" metaphor that Imran Khan introduced long before the Malaysian leader decided to make a come back in politics.

While no one expected Mahatir-led coalition would win the majority of seats, just days before the election, Malaysian opposition expressed the hope that the former prime minister’s connection to rural Muslim voters can trigger what they called “Malay tsunami”, a metaphor to describe a surge of support from disillusioned members of the country's Muslim majority.

Imran Khan's "tsunami" and "Tabdeeli" slogans helped inspired youth in Khyber Paktunkhwa and elsewhere in the country to vote for his party.

PTI chairman has long used these metaphors to describe his huge political rallies.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan’s northwestern province ruled by Khan’s party, also named its tree plantation campaign as “billion tree tsunami”, an initiative to combat climate change. The initiative was hailed as a true conservation success story by the international organizations.

Before PTI surged out of political obscurity, Mahathir Mohamad had come to Pakistan to attend a conference "A clash of civilizations or A clash of interests?" on the invitation of Imran Khan in 2006.Khan's political critics were also among the guests. 

The seminar was largely attended by the cross-section of the society including intellectuals, columnists, journalists, retired generals, bureaucrats, and prominent figures of the city and above all the leaders of all political parties of Pakistan.

It was perhaps for the first time in the history of Pakistan that on the invitation of a political party a former prime minister of a foreign country visited Pakistan.

Veteran Malaysian politician Mahathir Mohamad won a shock election victory in May to become the oldest prime minister in the world.

His victory was termed a political earthquake that toppled the country's scandal-plagued premier Najib Razak and ousted a regime that ruled the the country for over six decades.

Months later, Khan  also won majority of seats in the general election and became Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Mahathir Mohamad is  one of the few foreign  leaders whom Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan  has always admired.

 Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish President; Brazil's Lula da Silva; and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore were the other leaders he said he looked up to.

During his visit, Khan invited Mahathir Mohamad to visit Pakistan and  grace  the "Pakistan Day" ceremony on March 23.