LAHORE, Jan 15: Blaming Governor Salmaan Taseer for intrigues against democracy in connivance with district nazims, the PML-N says it will not allow ‘Gen Musharraf’s system and team’ to remain imposed (on the country).

“The governor and the nazims are in fact part of Musharraf’s team who cannot tolerate the ongoing democratic process and thus are conspiring to dislodge it,” says Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan.

“Everybody knows that in whose cabinet the governor had been,” Rana Sana said, a reference to Mr Taseer who was a minister in the federal caretaker cabinet Gen Musharraf had formed before Feb 18, 2008, polls.

The law minister was replying to a query in a joint press conference he had held along with party’s Punjab president and senior adviser to the provincial government Sirdar Zulfikar Ali Khan Khosa and local government minister Dost Muhammad Khosa here on Thursday. The press conference was called in response to an earlier media talk by some district nazims and then by Mr Taseer on some advertisements pointing out alleged corruption worth over Rs114 billion in district governments.

The senior adviser supported the law minister by saying that Gen Musharraf had once declared nazims as his (the army dictator’s) men asking they must not be touched upon when the then finance secretary had put a summary to him for audit of the local bodies’ accounts.

Dost Khosa alleged that after Musharraf, the governor was becoming a shield for the nazims.

“Where the nazims went immediately after their press conference,” he asked, adding, they (the nazims) had found a new shelter (in the Governor’s House).

He said if the nazims were neat and clean they should have offered their assistance in collecting data on the alleged corruption in response to the letters the provincial government had sent to them.

He chided the nazims for claiming credit for the development projects worth billions of rupees but shifting the responsibility for the financial misappropriation to the district coordination officers (DCOs) saying the latter were principal accounts officers.

He criticised the governor for saying that Punjab had not been given on contract to someone. “The governor has ridiculed an elected provincial government just for the sake of representative of a district,” he lamented.

He also regretted a nazim’s remarks that the chief minister must put a stop to ‘this nonsense’ (corruption charges), saying the nazim had done injustice to his political career.

Claiming that the PML-N and the PPP were on the same wavelength in the provincial coalition, Rana Sana said the government would not take any ‘dictatorial step’ against the local bodies and would rather put the system before the provincial assembly for reforming and amending it.

To a question about threat of legal action by the nazims, the senior adviser said the government had not nominated anyone specifically in the advertisements it issued to the media about the misappropriations pointed out in a report of the auditor-general.

He also said his party was not against local bodies as it held local government polls whenever it came to power.

He told a questioner that some nazims wanted to join the PML-N, but they were told that this change of political loyalty would not benefit them if they were found guilty of corruption in future audits and inquiries.