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Editorial

An apology of portfolio reshuffle

Cabinet functioning gets messier
25 April 2006
• EDITORIAL
An elephantine cabinet has apparently jettisoned Altaf Hossain Chowdhury and Barkat Ullah Bulu as commerce minister and adviser to the ministry respectively ostensibly for their poor performances. We think it is a fig-leaf of a change brought into the cabinet. In fact, change is an overstatement. It is more of a gimmick to assuage public ire over exorbitant essential prices than something done out of any genuine conviction or administrative consideration. It is so much of a political stunt that even a failure of a minister has been made to look as scapegoating and perhaps martyrdom.

Or is it? They have not got a sack; their status, for all practical purposes, has been protected. The former has the glaze of a new look as minister without portfolio meaning little work all play. One almost feels that though he looks sidelined publicly he has been rewarded quietly -- thanks to the skyrocketing essential prices and his failed negotiating performance at the Hong Kong WTO.

By removing a minister what miracle is expected by way of prices, which have progressively risen over the past four years, coming down at the fag end of the government tenure? Besides, a few other ministries are involved with the price-line behaviour.

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Altaf Hossain was an unqualified disaster in the role of a home minister, and yet without a blink of the eye, the government made him into a minister of commerce allowing him to function that long to quip such a joke that he didn't see any fire brigade lorry to put out blaze in the market prices people were complaining of. Was he wrong to brag, he was 'elevated, not demoted'?

Barkat Ullah was an adviser to the commerce ministry and he has been inducted again as an adviser, this time to the women and children affairs ministry. What are the functions of an adviser except to work as a costly appendage?

How serious the government is about bringing down prices can be measured by the stopgap arrangement envisaging Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, who already has a plateful as the water resources minister, to be holding the additional charge of the commerce ministry. How can ad-hocism do with such a demanding portfolio as commerce?

Inevitably, we come to the conclusion, therefore, that the PM's overall approach to portfolio distribution and cabinet functioning tend to put her sense judgement under a question-mark. There are quite a few ministers in her cabinet who have had a much-publicised reputation for corruption and incompetence. No axe has fallen on them. Why?

With such unanswered questions, the last palliative of portfolio change falls flat.

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