Do we like Shehbaz Sharif?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A thin record on LGBTQ+ and women's issues, a clean court record, and real concerns from rights groups about press freedom under his government.
Shehbaz Sharif is the younger brother of three-time PM Nawaz Sharif. He made his name as a Lahore businessman and Lahore Chamber of Commerce president, then moved into politics and was first elected to the Punjab Assembly in 1988. He served three stints as Punjab chief minister and became prime minister in April 2022 after Imran Khan was ousted.
The corruption stories are the big shadow over him. He was accused of money laundering, but a Lahore special court acquitted him in a Rs16 billion case in October 2022, after the FIA's own prosecutor acknowledged there was no evidence of direct deposits or withdrawals. He called it a political revenge case. Other cases were reported as ending the same way, though we only opened the one.
The darkest accusation is from 2014. Police clashed with supporters of Pakistan Awami Tehreek in Lahore's Model Town and 14 people died. The party's chief Tahirul Qadri has accused Sharif, then Punjab's chief minister, of being implicated. A 2015 joint investigation team cleared him and a colleague, and the article we read reports no charges against him. It is a partisan fight, and it has never been resolved in court as far as we could find.
On the harm test, we found nothing from him about trans people, gay people or women, and no climate denial. That is a gap in what we found, not proof of a stance either way. The concern is civil liberties. Amnesty called the 27th Amendment, passed under his government, part of a sustained attack on judicial independence. Nine press groups wrote to him in September 2026 about what they called a rapidly deteriorating press freedom climate.
The recent fight is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. His government put the province, which is run by the party of jailed ex-PM Imran Khan, under emergency and governor's rule, citing militant attacks. Sharif denies it was meant to remove the opposition. Back in April, a post on his official X account went out with the word draft still in it, which had critics asking who actually writes his posts.
The good stuff is thinner than the scandals. Dawn's profile credits him with Metro Bus projects in Punjab, which it calls his most touted achievement. He has also publicly pledged to protect minorities, but we could not open those reports. We found no big personal charity story.