Nawaz Sharif

Muhammad Nawaz Sharif was born into a prominent business family in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan on December 25, 1949. He is the elder son of Mian Muhammad Sharif a joint owner of the Ittefaq Group of Industries.

He graduated from Government College Lahore and got his degree in Law from Punjab University. He was by 1980 director of one of Pakistan’s largest industrial conglomerates.

Political Life of Nawaz Sharif

In 1985 Nawaz Sharif was elected chief minister of the province.

He led the opposition as an opponent of Benazir’s government and was elected to parliament in 1990.

When Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir and her government in 1990, he again called a general election. As a result, Nawaz Sharif was brought to power in 1990.

He became prime minister in November 1990, his political coalition, the IJI, had more than a two- thirds majority in the National Assembly. The IJI alliance, a grouping of parties whose chief components were the PML and the JI, had been formed in 1988 to oppose the PPP in the elections of that year.

However, Nawaz Sharif could not complete his term of five years, and was dismissed by the President in April 1993. He was reinstated by the superior Judiciary, but had to resign along with the President in July 1993.

Nawaz Sharif was returned to power in February 1997 with a huge majority of more than two-third of the assembly.

One of the first things Sharif did at the start of his second term was to orchestrate the scrapping of Article 58-(2)(b) through another Amendment to the Constitution – an exercise in which Sharif’s party was joined by all the other political parties in the National Assembly and Senate and brought Fourteenth Amendment for party discipline to end horse trading in the assembly.

After military takeover on 12 Oct, 1999, the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif (former Chief Minister of Punjab) and five other officials were booked on charges of hijacking, kidnapping and attempted murder in the “Plane Conspiracy” case. The prosecution’s case was based on a police report filed by an Army Colonel.  The case was tried by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi, which sentenced him to life imprisonment. In their appeal to the High Court, Mr. Sharif’s lawyers maintained that no charge of corruption was proved against the former Prime Minister, and that it was the Prime Minster’s constitutional right to remove the Army Chief.

The Military Government of Pakistan deported Nawaz Sharif to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he lived with his family for 7 years and then moved to United Kingdom. He returned to Pakistan just before the 2008 General Election but was not allowed to take part in the contest.