Not on!

Pakistan is going through one of the worst financial emergency to hit the country. Escalated terrorism had brought the country’s economy to a fester, only to make it even worse with the worldwide recession. Pakistan is dreadfully seeking help not only from international financial institutions but also from the ‘friendly countries’ or ‘Friends of Pakistan group’ as they would call it. Country, they say, is at the verge of a bankruptcy since they do not have enough dollars to support even one month’s import bill.

One would expect the government to take desperate measures to solve the liquidity crunch and to bring back the economy on track. Things like cutting down on avoidable imports for a while, lessening non-developmental government expenditure, efforts to save every penny in the exchequer that can be etc. But what do we see instead? A cabinet expansion in the central government; by not just one or two, but by forty ministers. A fifty member cabinet now increased to a big fat 55, with as many advisors inducted by the Prime Minister with all the perks and privileges that come with the designation. What an open and cold-blooded injustice with the tax payers’ money, as ten million rupees is the budget for each minister for a period of one year.  

There is still a likelihood the number of ministers may swell up to seventy, once two othercoalition partners of the government are accommodated in the federal cabinet. Nepotism at it’s worst.

What one fails to understand is that what do they actually plan to do with all these ministers? If Chinese government can run its country, rather successfully, with only twenty five ministers, if Japan can do exceedingly well with only eighteen, if Germany is content with a fifteen member cabinet, why does Pakistan need fifty five? The other thing that one needs to know is the credentials of all those ministers and the basis on which they were chosen to lead a particular department. One would also like to meet the genius who invented portfolios like ‘Ministry of Population’.

If that was not enough, Mr. President – the Fresh King of Islamabad, Asif Ali Zardari took an army of 200 delegates with him on a chartered flight to meet the King of Saudi Arabia just to get concessions on oil payments.

How long will nepotism rule the roost in this ‘Land of pure’? How long will it take before our taxes would actually be spent on us? I hope I live to see that day.