Lahore: Senior PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, became the first woman chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province. Maryam, the 50-year-old senior vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, won the chief ministerial elections amidst a walkout by lawmakers of former prime minister Imran Khan’s party-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC).
The PML-N leader defeated Rana Aftab of the PTI-backed SIC to win the chief ministerial elections for the politically crucial Punjab province, home to 120 million people. Maryam paid a visit to her mother’s grave at Jati Umra before going to the Punjab Assembly, where the election for the post of chief minister took place.
In a post on X, the PML-N said Maryam also visited the graves of her paternal grandparents. “For the first time in the history of our nation, a woman will become the CM Punjab. Maryam Nawaz Sharif will be the first woman to take the oath as CM Punjab!” the PML-N had said in a post on X before the election.
Born in 1973, Maryam is the eldest among four siblings and was not into politics until 2013 when Nawaz became the prime minister for the third time. Soon, she emerged as the family’s apparent political heir while her brothers handled the business. After Nawaz was disqualified from the post of prime minister in 2017 for lying in his assets declarations before the ECP, Maryam assumed a more prominent role in the party.
However, days before the 2018 election, which she planned to contest, a court in Islamabad convicted her of corruption, along with her father and her husband. The conviction disqualified her from contesting elections for a decade.
