After a lull of a few months, the Punjab government and the Governor’s House are back on the war path revising the era of hot bickering between the chief minister and the governor once at the pinnacle before the assassination of former governor Salmaan Taseer provocation that sounded the bugle made its way with Punjab Governor Latif Khosa’s action to send the chief minister’s summary for VCs appointment governor, slamming PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif for pressing a deadline for the formation of an independent commission on the Abbottabad raid and overplaying parliament’s resolution for the nomination procedure in independent commission with a statement that instead the prime minister and opposition leader in the National Assembly, consensus of all stakeholders will prevail.
Taseer, who was inducted by former president Pervez Musharraf and continued under the PPP regime in 2008, and the PML-N government in Punjab, were always found with their horns locked and squabbling with each other on political and administrative powers issues. Their wrangling continued to stoke political temperature. However, respite was felt after Taseer was murdered and was replaced by Khosa, who after his appointment, visited Raiwind and assured Nawaz to repair the working relationship and improve the PPP-PML-N ties.
Since then, the governor and the CM have never clashed on any issue. However, the situation got hot when the governor openly denounced Nawaz and defied the CM’s powers. In reaction, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, who always sparred with the former governor, said the PML-N had accepted Khosa for the sake of democracy but Khosa had proved to be another Taseer.
“Latif Khosa has toed Taseer’s line and staged a war against the PML-N,” he said, adding that President Asif Zardari had done great injustice by appointing Khosa the Punjab governor.