Governor Salmaan Taseer and the nazims from all over Punjab have thrown down the gauntlet to the provincial government of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif indicating a fierce battle between the two sides in the days to come.

Brought together by a common threat, the governor and the nazims made a perhaps decisive and bold display of their unity at a meeting on Thursday where a typically hostile Mr Taseer spoke strongly against the Sharif-led administration’s alleged designs to establish its supremacy over the local bodies in the province.

“The Punjab government should apologise to the nazims,” Mr Taseer demanded in reference to a quite damaging expose of the ‘corrupt nazims’ through a newspaper advertisement issued by the Sharif administration. The advertisement was supposedly based on the results of a special audit by the Auditor General that was requested by the Punjab government.

The governor’s roar was preceded by a press conference where the nazims came up with first hand accounts of how, in their own words, they have been pressurised to switch over to the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

This earned the gubernatorial side a prompt riposte from some famous firebrands in the PML-N in Rana Sanaullah and Sardar Zulfikar Khosa aided by Dost Muhammad Khosa. The air reverberated with the cries of ‘remnants of the Musharraf era’ as the three Leaguers took on the challenge from the governor and ‘his’ nazims.