Cabinet reshuffle after Senate polls on the cards

The federal cabinet is expected to undergo a reshuffle after the much-anticipated Senate elections as Prime Minister Imran Khan is not happy with several key ministers’ performance and has decided that only those would stay in the cabinet who can deliver.

Party sources said that performance and delivery are the only things that the premier is interested in as he feels exhausted by hearing excuses after excuses and inordinate delays in the completion of projects for one reason or another for a long time.

“It’s time to deliver and the prime minister has this realisation,” a key federal minister, who holds a prominent portfolio, said while requesting anonymity.

“The frustration is growing within the party circles and the premier strongly believes that the ministers must start delivering without coming up with excuses,” the minister said.

“The threshold for staying in cabinet is performance,” the minister revealed, adding that “heads will roll after Senate polls.”

The reshuffle is likely against a backdrop of declining popularity of the ruling party, performance in the by-elections and losing ground to opposition parties and voters expressing their disapproval with the government’s economic policies.

While lauding that several economic indicators were moving in the right direction, the minister admitted that “blaming opposition for everything and giving a positive spin to lackluster performance is not working. We have to deliver without coming up with excuses.”

The minister revealed that the core party leadership is also concerned that the key ministries are being run by non-PTI ministers and technocrats.

Another challenge that the government is facing, the minister said, is that key ministers are neither presenting nor defending their performance on media and the crucial job of narrative-building through performance is left to those who do not have the requisite expertise.

The premier frequently chairs spokespersons meetings and issues directions to defend government policies at all the forums, the party insiders said, adding that the they also have acknowledged that the narrative of blaming previous governments is not yielding the desired results anymore in and outside the parliament, saying it is time to back-up the claims earlier made through performance.

Publicly, the party insiders said, opposition is blamed but internally there is realisation that performance-based narrative should be presented before people.

Cabinet reshuffle, they said, is aimed at maintaining a strong grip on the party, keeping the allies pleased and uplifting the morale of the party.

Once the Senate polls are over, they added, the premier will push harder to take government’s performance to a higher level in the remaining time of its five-year tenure.

In December 2020, PM Khan while speaking at an event where he invited his cabinet to sign a performance agreement for the coming year had expressed that his ministers “must deliver” on key promises as “the time for performance has arrived”.

It is learnt that the PM will rejig the portfolios of several of his ministers once PTI – as expected – takes majority in the Senate.

Since 2018 when PTI came to power, the premier has reshuffled cabinet on a number of occasions.

The last time he reshuffled his cards was in December 2020 when he elevated his adviser Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh as the full-fledged finance minister and brought high-profile political ally Sheikh Rashid to the interior ministry’s helm.

Imran had picked Azam Khan Swati, who was serving as the minister for counter-narcotics, to replace Rashid as the railways minister, while Rashid’s predecessor at the interior ministry, Brig (retd) Ijaz Ahmed Shah, was given the narcotics control ministry, vacated by Swati.

Earlier, the premier had carried out a reshuffle of ministers in cabinet positions in April 2020, appointing Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar as the federal minister for economic affairs after taking back charge of the minister for national food security from him two days after his name emerged as a major beneficiary in an investigation report into the recent sugar crisis.

In the major cabinet rejig, Syed Fakhar Imam was made federal minister for national food security, Hammad Azhar as federal minister for industries and Azam Swati as federal minister for narcotics control.

The prime minister had accepted resignation of MQM-P’s Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui as the federal minister for information technology and telecommunication and MQM-P’s Aminul Haq had replaced him.

Among other changes, Babar Awan was appointed as PM’s adviser for parliamentary affairs. In April 2019, PTI stalwart Asad Umar was sacked.

Hours after being shown the door, Umar had reportedly said that he was removed by PM because of his “performance” at the post.

In the April 2019 cabinet reshuffle after criticism mounted on economic and security policies, the portfolio of information minister was taken away from Fawad Chaudhry, who was named as the federal minister for science and technology.

Back then, Hafeez Sheikh was named the adviser on finance; minister of state for interior Shehryar Afridi was made the minister for states and frontier regions (Safron) and PM had made Brig (retd) Ijaz Ahmed Shah the interior minister.

Ghulam Sarwar Khan, who previously was the petroleum minister, was named the federal minister for aviation.