Actress Aymen Saleem has formally joined the Pakistan People’s Party, announcing the move at a press conference in Karachi where she appeared alongside the party’s Sindh president, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro. The daughter of former Pakistan cricketer Saleem Yousuf, she said the decision was inspired by a lifelong admiration for the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Saleem told reporters that she had looked up to Benazir Bhutto since she was a child, and that every girl who followed the former prime minister’s journey could not help but be impressed by it. She spoke of how Bhutto became the first woman elected to lead a Muslim-majority country at the age of thirty-five, and of the exile, imprisonment and threats to her safety that marked her career. What stayed with Saleem, she said, was that Bhutto still chose to return home, because her people mattered more to her than her own safety. From that example, she added, she had learned young that a girl’s dreams are never too small and that dreams have no gender.
Explaining her own decision, Saleem was careful to frame it as something larger than a career move. For her personally, she said, joining the party was not simply a political decision but a promise, and she thanked the PPP for the opportunity while pledging to work sincerely for Pakistan and its people. She also spoke of her upbringing, saying that patriotism had been part of her home life and that she had always wanted to contribute to the country, and she closed by thanking the party leadership, including President Asif Ali Zardari and Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
Saleem’s path to this point has already taken several turns. Before she ever appeared on television, she worked in investment banking and consulting in New York, and she later found fame in Pakistan through her performance in the hit drama Chupke Chupke. In 2021 she announced that she would no longer be acting, stepping away from the industry for a time before eventually returning to the screen. Her entry into politics now marks yet another change of direction, and it places her among a growing number of Pakistani performers who have moved into party politics, although others in recent years, including Farhan Ally Agha and Shamoon Abbasi, have aligned themselves with the rival Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.
Whether Saleem becomes a serious political figure or remains a famous face on the party’s stage will depend on what she does next. Celebrity recruits can draw crowds and younger voters, but they can just as easily fade into the background once the announcement fades. If she takes on real party work and sticks with it, her story, from banking in New York to prime-time television and now to the PPP, could become one of the more interesting political journeys in Pakistan today.
