32 elected, 18 selected members form federal cabinet

ISLAMABAD: There are a total of 18 unelected and 32 elected members of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s federal team after the latest additions and removal,writes Tariq Butt.

All the five advisers and 14 special assistants to the prime minister except Ali Nawaz Awan, who is elected to the National Assembly from Islamabad, are unelected and have been picked up by the prime minister for different reasons and qualifications.

However, twenty-seven federal ministers and four ministers of state are members of the parliament. They include three senators - Shibli Faraz, Dr. Farogh Naseem and Azam Swati - while the rest of them are members of the National Assembly.

While it is easy to remove any unelected member of the cabinet for having no weightage for the government in the sense that he/ she has no vote in the National Assembly or Senate, it is not that simple to sack an elected cabinet member because his/ her support is always required in the precarious numbers game in Parliament.

Not only during the deep crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but even before its outbreak, some unelected advisers and special assistants have been high profile, working very closely with the prime minister. They are in-charge of key ministries like finance, commerce etc.

During the present pandemic, advisers and special assistants including Dr Zafar Mirza, Hafeez Shaikh, Abdul Razak Dawood, Dr Sania Nishtar, and Usman Dar [for working to set up Corona Tiger Force] are visible doing their bit in different fields.

Among the elected ministers, Asad Umar, Hammad Azhar, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Syed Fakhar Imam [heading a parliamentary committee to work out holding of National Assembly session], Omar Ayub and Noorul Haq Qadri are busy in one way or the way in the prevailing coronavirus crisis.

Even otherwise, a number of ministers, ministers of state, advisers and special assistants are hardly registered publicly for not known to be doing anything noteworthy. Especially, the cabinet members belonging to the allies of the ruling party generally work quietly while remaining within their domains and avoid political controversies, and locking horns with the opposition parties.

While some ministers are not extending any helping hand to wrestle with the spread of COVID-19 outbreak, they are fighting the government’s case in TV talks shows on daily basis. The prime minister keeps giving regular guidelines to them and other official spokesmen how to effectively project the official policies.

The premier is now minister for health, establishment, parliamentary affairs, climate change, commerce, textiles, finance, revenue, overseas Pakistanis and statistics division. Under the law, the prime minister is the minister of every ministry that doesn’t have a federal minister.