PTI’s Omar Sarfraz Cheema, whom the federal government Tuesday removed as Punjab governor through a Cabinet Division notification after President Alvi’s refusal to approve the summary of his dismissal, has said that he is still the governor and would not go home silently the way former chief minister Usman Buzdar went.
Cheema spoke to reporters in Islamabad on Wednesday as the doors of Lahore’s Governor House remained shut on him under instructions by the PML-N leadership. He said that “the Sicilian mafia” had turned civil servants into their personal employees and violated the constitution.
Cheema warned that Punjab’s constitutional and political crisis will deepen in the next 24 hours. If the constitutional institutions and judiciary failed to provide justice, people would take to the streets, he said. Cheema said that he had the option of dissolving the Punjab Assembly from day one but he decided to exercise restraint. He said that constitutionally he was still the governor, but the governor house had been occupied and he did know where to lodge a complaint.
Cheema said that Pakistan’s biggest province had been reduced to a joke with two chief ministers. He urged the “people in the constitutional institutions” to immediately intervene and hold fresh elections. Cheema also said that the chief minister’s office must be liberated. He said Usman Buzdar was a mild-mannered person who did not speak to the media after his office was occupied as it was difficult to counter this “Sicilian mafia” but no one should be misled about him as he was no Usman Buzdar and would not sit silent.
