<\/p>\n
Much of what she has accomplished until now has been a fight for her father’s vindication. As she takes the CM’s oath, however, she can no longer just be her father’s daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will prove myself to be my father\u2019s strength, not his weakness,\u201d announced Maryam as she exited the Federal Judicial Academy (FJA) in July 2017, after recording her statement before the joint investigation team<\/a> probing the Sharif family\u2019s business dealings abroad.<\/a><\/p>\n She appeared composed, her focused gaze speaking louder than her words. For the last several months, Maryam and her family had found themselves besieged by a fortitude of corruption allegations, which would ultimately land her a short stint in prison<\/a> and force her father, PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, into yet another self-imposed exile. But all of that was yet to come.<\/p>\n On that fateful Wednesday in the federal capital, by the time her short speech ended, Maryam Nawaz had announced herself as a major force in Pakistan\u2019s shifting political landscape \u2014 and the world had noticed.<\/p>\n This was hardly Maryam\u2019s first foray into the country\u2019s political arena. She had been actively involved in the party\u2019s election campaign in the run-up to the 2013 elections, while also heading the PML-N\u2019s social media wing during and after the polls. In 2014, she was made chairperson of the Prime Minister\u2019s Youth Programme until her appointment was challenged in the Lahore High Court<\/a> a year later, forcing her to resign. She was later seen distributing laptops to students on behalf of the Punjab government even though she held no elected office either in the province or at the Centre.<\/p>\n In 2016, when the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had to undergo open-heart surgery, it wasn\u2019t the Prime Minister\u2019s Office or the information ministry that had control over the biggest story of the time. It was Maryam who became the centre of media attention,<\/a> providing up-to-date and regular updates on her father\u2019s condition to his adoring public via her Twitter (now X) account. From announcing the prime minister\u2019s decision to undergo major surgery to tweeting his first picture after the procedure, Maryam\u2019s Twitter feed provided minute details about how much time the patient would spend inside the intensive care unit (ICU), as well as his tentative plans to come back home.<\/p>\n At the time too, Maryam\u2019s control over the government\u2019s messaging raised some eyebrows, but the issue came to a head much later when audio clips of her phone conversations<\/a> with then Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed were leaked in which she was issuing instructions to refuse advertisements to certain TV channels. Maryam would later admit that the audio clip was genuine but defended herself by saying that she had been referring to party ads.<\/p>\n By all accounts, Maryam\u2019s first real test in electoral politics came in September 2017, when she led the party\u2019s campaign in the by-elections for the NA-120 seat, which was left vacant by Nawaz Sharif\u2019s ouster<\/a> in the Panama case verdict. Here, Maryam campaigned for her ailing mother, Kulsoom Nawaz, who ended up winning the seat,<\/a> albeit with the victory margin shrinking considerably. Pundits would debate whether this was actually a victory for the embattled PML-N \u2014 after all, this was the constituency that the party and the Sharif family had dominated for almost three decades. \u201cIt was inconceivable that they could be defeated\u201d, wrote journalist Zahid Hussain.<\/a><\/p>\n For Maryam, however, this would be the moment she finally cast her shell and declared herself the heir to Nawaz Sharif\u2019s political empire. \u201cFor a party with a conservative social ethos and very few women in senior party and cabinet positions, her taking charge has been a positive change,\u201d observed Zahid Hussain. \u201cBut being the daughter of the top leader surely makes a huge difference in a dynastic political culture.\u201d<\/p>\n The journey was more difficult than she had imagined, Maryam would admit. In an interview<\/a> with Voice of America\u2019s<\/em> Irum Abbasi, she described how women who were in the limelight or the public eye, particularly in leading roles, faced harsher criticism than their male counterparts. \u201cIf a woman has formed ideals, principles, ideologies, convictions, values and wants to carve a niche for herself, it will always be viewed with a little suspicion,\u201d she said, adding that despite the resistance from within the party\u2019s ranks, she was \u201cpleasantly surprised\u201d by how accepting the people of Pakistan were.<\/p>\n Whether \u201cthe people\u201d accepted her or not, one thing that was clear to all was that her ascendency had come at a huge cost \u2014 both to Maryam on a personal level as well as to the party, many of whose stalwarts weren\u2019t too impressed by how quickly she had moved up the ranks, particularly in a party that was all too male-dominated and had hardly any women in leadership roles.<\/p>\n As she moved into the spotlight, Maryam found herself increasingly at the receiving end of misogynistic remarks, ranging from comments on her clothes to her age. While much of the vitriol directed at her came from the PTI, social media too raged with discussions on her choice of luxury clothes and accessories, as well as the way she looked at her age. Even her appearance at her son, Junaid Safdar\u2019s wedding, drew flak from social media users, with some going as far as accusing her of \u201cspoiling the day\u201d for her daughter-in-law by looking too good for her age.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t just her political opponents who stood against her. After Nawaz\u2019s ouster, Maryam became the party\u2019s anti-establishment face \u2014 even earlier, she was widely suspected to have leaked a story<\/a> about the government\u2019s confrontation with top military brass over countering militancy \u2014 counting the injustices done to her father over the years. This antagonism did not go down too well with some of the party\u2019s senior leadership \u2014 chief among them, former interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who said that Maryam needed to \u201cprove herself\u201d<\/a>. Thus, the schism between the Shehbaz group and the Maryam group finally emerged for everyone to see.<\/p>\n Race to the top<\/h2>\n
Jumping into the fray<\/h2>\n
The backlash<\/h2>\n