Cabinet shake-up

In this topsy-turvy world of Naya Pakistan, Khusro Bakhtiar has become the first casualty of the sugar inquiry report, being promoted to economic affairs minister. He replaces Hammad Azhar, who is now the Federal Minister for Industries. It is unfortunate. Azhar had been doing reasonably well, and this seems to be a reward for Bakhtiar when his name, far from having been cleaned, is still deep in the mud. The other changes saw Fakhar Imam take over Bakhtiar’s previous job as the Federal Minister for National Food Security, MQM’s Aminul Haq appointed as Federal Minister for Telecom, and Azam Swati becoming the new Narcotics Control minister. Swati’s old job, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, will go to Babar Awan. Abdul Razak Dawood loses Industries but is still adviser on Commerce, Textiles, Production, and Investment.

The report also helped open a can of worms in Punjab after provincial government spokesperson Shahbaz Gill said Jahangir Tareen had been removed as chairperson of the provincial task force on agriculture in light of the findings of the inquiry reports. Tareen retorted that he wasn’t chairman and no notification of his appointment existed. So why would Gill feel the urge to tweet this and then not withdraw it? There have long been murmurs that Tareen was indeed chairing these meetings, rather than just attending. Could it be that for well over a year, Tareen has been quietly chairing the meetings of a body that directly influences his business interests without a notification because he is not legally allowed to hold any official government office?

It would help if Tareen clarified what he was doing in those meetings, given that the optics would be bad even if he were just attending as a ‘dishonest’ politician-businessman. Instead, he has doubled down by claiming most of the subsidy money he made was under Shehbaz Sharif. If this were true, and he was ‘honest’, he could have blown the whistle on the corrupt nature of the subsidy, since the Sharifs also benefitted. But he didn’t. He kept the loot for himself. Because that is apparently what trustworthy people do these days.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2020.

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