Fattening cabinet

The cabinet is violative of the legal limit of not exceeding 11% of the total membership of both houses of Parliament

The federal cabinet is swelling like a sourdough — from 25 in April 2022 to 70 in September 2022 to 77 in January this year. And now, seven SAPMs (special assistants to prime minster) have been added to the cabinet to take the count to an unprecedented 85 — including 34 federal ministers, seven ministers of state, four advisers to the PM and 40 SAPMs. Apart from that, there are 38 parliamentary secretaries in the National Assembly solely appointed to answer questions on behalf of the ministers in their absence. With the new additions, the federal cabinet is now almost half the size of the ruling PDM’s parliamentary party in the lower house.

The obese cabinet is violative of the legal limit, as under the 18^th constitutional amendment, the cabinet size is not to exceed 11% of the total membership of both houses of Parliament, which comes to something around 49. While the successive governments over the last two decades have all crossed the constitutional limit, the incumbent coalition has gone far too ahead, coming close to doubling it — and that too in a short span of 10 months. Given the broad base of the ruling coalition, the large size of the cabinet is understandable to an extent; but at a time when the economic crisis is aggravating by the day, with the masses hard-pressed by a back-breaking price hike, inflating an already fat cabinet is simply insensitive and atrocious.

That each cabinet member costs the exchequer dear in terms of salaries, allowances, perks and privileges as well as personal staff goes without saying. There is, therefore, no room to even stretch the cabinet size to come close to the legal limit, let alone surpassing it. While the UK traditionally has about 30 cabinet members for a 600-strong parliament, even India — currently having 80 cabinet ministers and ministers of state, making 10% of the parliamentary strength of 800 — it is an example for us to emulate.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2023.

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