Home Latest News Maryam Nawaz Set to Return to Pakistan Next Week

Maryam Nawaz Set to Return to Pakistan Next Week

PMLN leader tasked with mobilizing party ahead of elections in Punjab, where PTI is currently favored to win

by Staff Report

File photo of Maryam Nawaz

Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Senior Vice President Maryam Nawaz is expected to return to Pakistan from London on Jan. 22 to lead the country’s mobilization efforts ahead of elections in Punjab, triggered by Chief Minister Parvez Elahi dissolving the provincial assembly last week.

According to local media, a meeting of the PMLN leadership in London, chaired by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, decided that Maryam would return to Pakistan within this month. It said that Nawaz, whose return has been anticipated since the ruling coalition came into power last April, would return at a later date.

Maryam left Pakistan for London in October. According to the PMLN, she underwent throat surgery in Switzerland earlier this month for a longstanding ailment and would return to Pakistan after her recovery had been completed in London. Her son, Junaid Safdar, returned last week, claiming that while he had no intent to enter politics at this stage, he would help his mother as she revamped the PMLN.

Sources within the PMLN have said that the party has decided to no longer rely on any “external actors”—a seeming reference to the security establishment and the party’s alliance with the Pakistan Peoples Party—for its political management, as this had seen defections of loyalists to rival parties. They said Nawaz was also “eager” to contest polls, as he had been in the camp that had disagreed with the party’s decision to delay the dissolution of the Punjab Assembly by having Elahi take a vote of confidence.

Observers maintain that the PMLN’s biggest issue is its reliance on members of the Sharif family to fill top positions, noting that the general public is unwilling to stomach situations wherein a father and son are leading at the center and in the province—as was the case last year when Shehbaz Sharif took charge as prime minister while his son was crowned Chief Minister of Punjab. It also lacks a cohesive narrative compared to the PTI, which is able to rely on both economic distress and Imran Khan’s ouster as rallying calls.

Nawaz’s continued absence is also a sticking point for PMLN supporters, as the PTI’s narrative of the party leadership not having stakes in Pakistan is gaining ground among the public.

On Monday, the prime minister chaired a meeting of the PMLN’s senior leadership in Lahore to deliberate on the caretaker setup in Punjab, as Elahi has already forwarded the names of three nominees to Governor Balighur Rehman. According to sources, the party has decided to attempt at evolving consensus on the candidates, thereby preventing the decision from ending up with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

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