Pakistan: The largest cabinet in the world
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Few other countries compare to Pakistan in dealing out lucrative ministerial positions to party members. In all, the present government of 13 political parties headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has 76 federal ministers, including state ministers, advisers and special assistants. Even India next door with 28 states, 8 union territories and a population of more than 1.3 billion people has 76 union ministers, including juniors. This is not the first time Pakistan is witnessing a very large cabinet. It’s been seen before under various governments, but historically speaking, this is the largest one.
Some of the first actions of the new government sworn into power in April last year, was to introduce more than a hundred amendments to laws to cripple legal proceedings against ruling dynasties and their allies. It is even more shocking to see this unprecedented size of cabinet in Pakistan at a time of great economic crisis, with scenes of people scrambling over each other to get a single 10 kg bag of subsidized wheat flour for a few hundred rupees cheaper than in the open market. Bangladesh, a comparable country in terms of political history and demography (but doing much better than Pakistan economically) has 53 cabinet ministers, including deputies, and is careful about how it spends public money.
To see the political classes of Pakistan behave shamelessly and irresponsibly in appointing ministers with so many perks and privileges at a time when the country is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, is criminal. While many of the portfolios are fragmented to create official job roles of designated ministers, there are still 23 without any work assigned to them. The fact is, there is no need for so many ministers with official security details, expensive cars fluttering the national flag, driving rashly through the traffic-jammed roads of a country begging for financial assistance, pleading the move-over of payable loans and seeking deposits with the State Bank of Pakistan to shore up foreign currency reserves.
It may be seen as a political necessity of PM Sharif and his party, to accommodate each of the 13 parties in the coalition government as they provide the numbers and a very thin majority to keep the government afloat.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
Even if for nothing else but optics, this systemic need for ministerial numbers, positions used as bargaining chips, and endless privileges is a travesty.
The problem is two-fold — political and sociological in different layers of the elite classes jockeying getting a position in the cabinet. Right now, it may be seen as a political necessity of PM Sharif and his party, to accommodate each of the 13 parties in the coalition government, as they provide the numbers, and a very thin majority to keep the government afloat. Paying this price is not a problem of course, as it is the people of Pakistan through the national exchequer who foot the bill in the form of heavy taxation, groaning as they already are under the weight of unprecedentedly high inflation.
Sociologically, there are two issues that may help understand the wild power grabbing of this kind in Pakistan. First, that it is neither any ideology or their commitment to the public good by being in politics. Instead, it is about individual and group pursuits of power for private ends. This leads to inter-elite bargaining for political support in lieu of a share in the power structure. Second, the feudal, dynastic political culture places high value on power, as a mark of honor, social influence, and providing for means to engage in clientele politics. Time and time again, we have witnessed the same — each time more frustrating and tone deaf as the country’s economy spirals further out of control.
Pakistan has been through many cycles of mindless power grabs, but history will remember this as its worst and most tragic moment.
- Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
