It is rumored that the federal cabinet will swell to, may be, 70 members. Which basically means one federal minister for about five MNA’s. This is done to accomodate all the various coalition partners. I don’t think this government is the pioneer in this trend, nor do I blame them entirely.
On principle, I do think that this is completely rediculous.
After all is said and done, Pakistan is, and remains, a poor country. To have the luxury of such a bloated cabinet is absurd. First of all, we need to go back to the original intent of the founders of our country, where the central government has few areas of control (e.g. foreign affairs, defence, finance, etc), and the rest should be de-centralized to provinces. And most importantly, the size of federal cabinet should be set in the constitution and limited to 10 or 14 key ministeries. Extraneous ministries created to oblige political supporters should be merged back to their mother-ship to make for efficient running of government.
Each minister and his/her haali-mawaalis (supporters) cost a lot to the national exchequer (tax money of people of Pakistan), and their number should be low, and commiserate with the size and needs to our country. For comparison, US, a country of 370 million people has only 15 (including Secy of Homeland Security - newest addition) Secretaries in the President’s cabinet. This number is not mandated in US constitution, but is not deviated from much.
