Islamabad, Feb 26 (EFE.- Maryam Nawaz, the eldest daughter of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, made history by becoming the first female chief minister of a Pakistani province on Monday.
Mariam Nawaz, 50, defeated her rival, Rana Aftab, in a 220-0 vote during a televised assembly session in Lahore after the controversial Feb. 8 general elections.
The fiery female politician thus closely followed in the footsteps of her father, who began his political career as the chief minister of Punjab in 1985, marking the beginning of a political dynasty that now includes his daughter.
“Maryam Nawaz Sharif is elected the chief minister of Punjab,” Speaker Malik Ahmad Khan announced.
In her victory speech, Maryam Nawaz wryly thanked her opponents, “who put me in difficulties, which included death cells, solitary confinements, years of court visits without a crime, incarceration of my father, and the death of the mother.”
“But despite all these difficulties, I feel indebted to my adversaries. They have done me many favors because they put me through a struggle that is second to none,” she said, asserting that she harbored no feelings for revenge in her heart.
Her rival, Aftab, was supported by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), an ally of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The opposition lawmakers boycotted the vote and walked out.
The Punjab assembly, comprising 371 seats, is the largest elected house in Pakistan, with 297 general seats, 66 reserved for women, and eight for minorities.
Maryam Nawaz is the political successor of Pakistan Muslim League-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif and would head the government of the country’s most populous province with over 120 million people.
She adds her name to the list of leading Pakistani women who have held public offices in the country’s 77 years of political history.
Notable among them include Benazir Bhutto, who, like Maryam, inherited her political legacy from her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and became Pakistan’s first, and the only so far, female prime minister in 1988.
Hina Rabbani Khar, from Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), served as Pakistan’s first female foreign minister in 2011 when she was 33.
Maryam Nawaz’s political journey began just before the 2013 general elections, in which she campaigned for her father in a Lahore constituency.
Later, she managed her mother’s election campaign in the same constituency in 2017, following Sharif’s disqualification by the court in graft cases.
Her role within the party became more prominent, particularly during the 2018 general elections, when she and her father were incarcerated on graft charges.
During Imran Khan’s government, Nawaz Sharif was granted bail to travel to London for medical treatment, leaving the party’s leadership in the hands of his daughter.
Maryam Nawaz’s assertive approach and fiery style drew significant attention during this period, especially when she amplified her father’s anti-establishment stance after his criticism of then-army chief, General Qamar Bajwa, in 2020.
However, ahead of the 2024 elections, the PML-N shifted away from its anti-establishment narrative, a move attributed to the reconciliatory politics of Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s younger brother and the current PML-N nominee for prime minister. EFE
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