The first minister of the Bajoran provisional government whose sudden death from heart failure in 2371 allowed Kai Winn to step into the office and seek to keep it.
Kalem Apren led the provisional government that ran Bajor in the years after the Cardassian withdrawal. He is never seen, and the series says little about his policies, but he held the planet's highest secular post while the kai led its faith.
His death opens the Deep Space Nine episode Shakaar. Kalem dies of heart failure and the Chamber of Ministers appoints Kai Winn to serve in his place until an election can be held, with every expectation that she will then win it unopposed and unite spiritual and political power in one person. Her heavy-handed demand that farmers in Dahkur Province surrender their soil reclamators provokes a stand-off with Kira's old resistance leader Shakaar Edon, who ends by announcing his own candidacy and succeeds Kalem as first minister.