World | Pakistan
I have the authority to overthrow provincial government - Taseer
The Governor of Punjab, the largest of the four provinces of Pakistan, has said he can change the provincial government any time if it acts beyond its limits.
- By Ashfaq Ahmed, Chief Reporter
- Published: 23:35 January 10, 2009
- Punjab Governor Taseer who said Sharif's party had to operate within certain limits.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Islamabad: The Governor of Punjab, the largest of the four provinces of Pakistan, has said he can change the provincial government any time if it acts beyond its limits.
"I have the power to knock them out in 24 hours and that will be according to the constitution because they do not have a majority but I do not do this because I don't want to but they always see some kind of perceived threat," Governor Salman Taseer said, while commenting on the strained relations with the Punjab Chief Shahbaz Sharif's Muslim League-led government.
Taseer, who is a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) hawk in Punjab, has been at daggers drawn with Sharif since the latter formed the government in Punjab after last year's general elections in Pakistan.
During a meeting with UAE-based journalists at Governor House, Gulf News asked Taseer whether he had ever come close to dissolving the Punjab Assembly due to controversies with the Chief Minister. He said there was no need to dissolve the assembly and the objective could be achieved by just replacing the chief minister.
Veto powers
"I just have to call the vote of confidence on the floor of the assembly and the job will be done but I don't want to do it because I am here to facilitate the government and not to stop them. I have veto powers in government decisions but I don't use them."
Further explaining the point of contention, the Governor said: "They [Sharif's party] have to live in certain limits. I am constitutional head of the province and I have to make sure that the government is run according to the constitution. They [the PML-N] are not used to it. I don't allow them to form forward political blocks in a bid to break up other political parties. I don't allow them to take control of the province in any extra-constitutional way. And I lay down certain grounds according to the constitution. So they don't like me."
Campaign
The Chief Minister's PML also launched a campaign against the Governor published in the local media. They alleged that 'drinking and dance' parties were held in Governor House in a bid to exploit Islamic sentiment against him.
"It was a ridiculous performance by them. They showed my pictures supposedly drinking in Governor House but they were two years old from a business meeting. It was a basically a smear campaign against me and exposed their mentality. I am not bothered about it," Taseer said. "Even today, the press in this country is out of control, they go for sensationalism and look at everything negatively. It is a very dangerous thing to do. There is no civil liberty and no respect for privacy. Their reporting is irresponsible, sometime they talk rubbish and they often let loose."
Taseer also owns a leading English newspaper The Daily Times. "We keep a liberal approach and we are anti-mullah but I don't interfere in editorial policy," he said.
Experience: Long political career
Salman Taseer started his political career when he was a student in the 1960s, as a close and active member the PPP during the era of the late Zulifqar Ali Bhutto, founder of the PPP. He ran the movement for Zulifqar Bhutto's freedom and against his arrest and death sentence.
Taseer has also written a political biography on the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
He was selected a member of the Punjab Provincial Assembly (MPA) from Lahore in the 1988 elections. After that he was defeated in the 1990, 1993 and 1997 on the National Assembly seats in Lahore.
Taseer returned to the political scene when he was selected as the Federal Minister for Industries, Production and Special Initiatives in the Caretaker setup for four months in 2007-2008. Taseer was nominated for the post of Governor of Punjab by the PPP government.
Taseer is a leading businessman and has vast experience of specialisation in merger and acquisitions, flotation, investment banking and stock market analysis.
'No extremists in assembly'
Islamabad: Some 95 per cent of the Pakistani population is against fundamentalism and extremism, said Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab.
"Fundamentalists were wiped out during the last general election as we have only two members from religious parties elected in the Punjab Assembly which has 371 members," he said and even those two are not extremists.
Taseer said there was no public support for any kind of fundamentalism. "For the first time even the civilian population has risen up against extremists in the troubled tribal areas."
Tribal areas
Regarding the problem of terrorism and extremism in tribal areas of Pakistan, Taseer favoured an all-out military operation against them.
"I don't think it can be handled politically. We have had no luck talking to them whenever we talked to them they used it to regroup," Taseer added.
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