Appointment of Governors

PTI Chairman is nominating the provincial governors which looks strange to me, for I had always thought that the governors were the President’s representatives in the provinces and a sort of check and balance over the provincial rulers.

If the PTI forms the govt. in the Punjab, which apparently it would, then how could Ch. Sarwar exercise any control over it, though he may have had even resigned from the PTI.  I earnestly wish and pray that our politicians when assigned gubernatorial posts show the moral fibre to act painfully neutral and in the best interest of the state in their dealings with the provincial govt., but it is only a wish and if the wishes were horses.........!! 

It didn’t use to be so before and the president could appoint anyone – a retired general, a judge, a bureaucrat or even an academic as the governor and his representative in the province.  I don’t know if the 18^th amendment, in order to strengthen the political party hierarchy beyond limits and curtail the powers of the president further, has played this havoc also with the system of the governance in the country, which to say the least is the least desirable.

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)