Sharif heir-apparent takes the ‘limelight’

Khan considers run for PM

LAHORE, Sept 13, (RTRS): In campaigning for a Pakistan by-election seen as a test of support for ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the most visible figure is not on the ballot: Sharif’s daughter, Maryam, widely touted as his political heir-apparent.

This past weekend, crowds mobbed Maryam’s car and threw rose petals as she crisscrossed the eastern city of Lahore campaigning for her mother, Kulsoom, who is the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party’s candidate to contest the seat Nawaz was forced to vacate by a Supreme Court ruling in July.

With Kulsoom in London for cancer surgery, accompanied by Nawaz, 43-year-old Maryam has led the campaign with fiery speeches denouncing Nawaz’s opponents and the Supreme Court. Her influence within the PML-N has grown in recent years, with senior party figures crediting her with Nawaz’s move to embrace relatively more pro-women and liberal causes in a staunchly conservative nation of 208 million people.

In a rare interview with foreign media, Maryam outlined to Reuters what drives her political ambitions as she emerges from her father’s shadow to become a prominent figure in the ruling party he still controls. “I’m proud to be the torch bearer of ideology which PML-N has,” Maryam said at the weekend in Punjab’s provincial capital Lahore, her father’s electoral power base. “I am (Nawaz’s) reflection, I am his extension. I have grown up espousing his agenda, his ideology.”

Maryam has framed the election as a chance for voters to protest the Supreme Court’s verdict against her father and help the PML-N flex its electoral muscle.

“Your vote was disrespected and disregarded, will you answer to this disrespect on Sept. 17?” Maryam asked at a recent rally. The by-election is seen as a litmus test for the PML-N’s political fortunes in the wake of Nawaz’s ouster, and an early indicator of voter sentiment ahead of a general election next year.

Maryam

ISLAMABAD:

Also:

As Pakistan’s cricketing hero turned politician Imran Khan considers a run for prime minister, his party’s record in his home province — especially the success of a widely touted reforestation initiative — is raising speculation that he might turn green advances into political advantage.

Pakistan is set to choose a new prime minister in elections due next year. Environmental issues remain far from the top of the list of concerns for most voters, despite worsening climate-related heat, drought, floods and other pressures.

But the record of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, in his home province of Khyber Pukhtunkwa, is gradually bringing him a bigger national political profile — and new possibilities.

After winning enough seats in 2013 to form a government in the province, in the country’s north, Khan’s party introduced a green growth initiative to tackle deforestation, build more small-scale hydroelectric projects and overhaul national parks.

It has promised a Billion Tree Tsunami of tree planting — and last month became the first government body in the world to meet its pledge under the Bonn Challenge of restoring more than 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) of degraded forests.

The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.

“I have trekked all over Pakistan’s mountainous north and it alarmed me to see all the cutting of forests,” Khan told Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

By replanting forests, Khyber Pukhtunkwa province “has taken important steps to save future generations from the dangerous effects of environmental changes,” he said.

The aim is to increase the area covered by forests in the province from 22 percent in 2013 to as much as 27 percent by 2018 through the Billion Tree Tsunami and the creation of new national parks in forested areas, he said. More than 40 percent of Pakistan’s natural forests are found within the province.