Do we like Maryam Nawaz?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Supportive talk on minorities and trans people sits against a rights body's findings on police killings and no reply to Ahmadi appeals that we could find.
Maryam Nawaz is the daughter of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and in February 2024 she became the first woman to run Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province. She's the fourth member of her family to hold the job, so nobody's calling it a come-from-nowhere story. Critics, including one Lahore analyst, say the surname did a lot of the lifting.
Her mouth gets her into stoushes. In February 2026 she told a laptop-handout event that the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were still living in the stone age, a dig at the PTI-run province next door. Dawn's report carried no apology and no reply from the KP side. It's a political cheap shot at a whole province rather than hate aimed at a group, but it's a bit much.
On the harm test, she gets a fair run. Her own words on minorities are strong: in December 2025 she said Punjab's minorities would have her stand like a wall against injustice, and that people are Pakistanis first. In April 2024 she announced trans schools at divisional level, and a skills programme for trans citizens followed in December 2025. We found no anti-LGBTQ+ words from her, and no sign she keeps company with harm-pushers.
The asterisk is the Ahmadis. Amnesty's May 2026 open letter says attacks on the community have grown in number and severity, especially around religious holidays, and begs her to take preventive steps. We couldn't find a direct reply from her. That doesn't make it her doing, but it's her watch.
The nastier stain is on the good-person side. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan counted at least 670 Crime Control Department encounters in 2025 that left 924 suspects dead, and alleges a deliberate policy of staged killings. Police and the department reject that, and Al Jazeera reports she has said crime has been curtailed. HRCP wants a judicial inquiry and says the government didn't answer its meeting requests.
Her government also has a thin skin about media. In November 2025 it announced a defamation case against journalist Ahmad Faraz over a report about a purported call between her and Hamza Sharif. The information minister called the report fake news, and Faraz denied any wrongdoing. Dawn's fact-checkers have also had a go at claims about her, rating a textbook claim misleading, so not everything said about her sticks.