Reshuffle, not expand, the cabinet
WE might be going through an expansion of the cabinet one of these days. We are not sure we are going to appreciate that. The reason is pretty simple: this country has generally had outsize cabinets, quite at variance with its geographical and administrative dimensions; and the one we have at this point is not much different from its predecessors.
It is always a good thing to have less and efficient government, for gargantuan political systems usually end up being lessons in despair. And so when we hear talk of the possibility of an increase in the size of the cabinet which took charge in January, we have that uncomfortable feeling somewhere inside of us that the enhancement will have more to do with making some people happy than with any real plan of streamlining administration.
The prime minister does not have to go for an expansion of the cabinet. She can certainly reshuffle it, which means she can drop those who have not performed well or shift them to ministries where they might do better. And, more importantly, she can take in new ministers she thinks will add to the quality of the government she leads.
On this point, let us be clear about certain things we think the prime minister should be doing. And it is that for all her emphasis on having fresh faces in the government, a line she adopted in January soon after taking charge as head of government for the second time, she needs to rethink her policy of keeping some of her party veterans outside the cabinet.
Abdur Razzaq and Tofail Ahmed did a creditable job in Sheikh Hasina's first cabinet. It is that experience which ought to be brought, through bringing them into the cabinet, into the business of governance today. Saber Hossain Chowdhury would make a suave, hands-on minister in this government. Why not bring him into it, together with Suranjit Sengupta? And there is one other point that remains indelible for us: in his brief stint as home minister in the late 1990s, Major (retd) Rafiqul Islam demonstrated not just seriousness about doing his job but also his ability to follow it up with effectual action. It is not right that such an able individual be kept outside the corridors of real power.
Of course, cabinets are never perfect specimens of public service. That has been true of nearly every nation where democracy has been the underpinning of government. And so we do not expect Sheikh Hasina's government to transform itself, by deeds and words, into a group of individuals ready to be ideals we can look up to. Even so, it can inspire hope among citizens through a demonstration of its capacity for action. But that is a task the cabinet can accomplish through resisting the temptation of appearing before the print and electronic media on every conceivable occasion.
Ministers do not have to spend their working hours inaugurating art exhibitions or speaking at all those inane seminars that invariably mutate into talking shops. And then there is the truth that ministers, when they need to speak, must not forget that they are entitled to express their points of view only on the portfolios they have been entrusted with.
Government gets to be a flawed exercise in politics when the local government minister ventures forth with his thoughts on the Indian high commissioner's comments on the Tipaimukh affair. It is not a pretty sight when the commerce minister speaks of the need to expand the scope of primary education in the country. We expect the information minister, and not the chief whip of the ruling party, to respond to questions raised about Bangladesh Television by the parliamentary opposition. We have precious little desire to see ministers contradict one another in public. In so many words, we would like ministers to be at their desks, to do their job twenty-four hours a day.
The cabinet will surely be in need of readjustments and indeed reinvention. That can happen only when the inclination towards a prime ministerial government is swiftly supplanted by cabinet government. And it can happen when assertive men and women make their entry into the cabinet. Since government is always collective business, it is important that the cabinet have in it individuals not afraid of speaking up for themselves, not loth to let the country know by their work that they have their own perspectives on the issues, that on their watch government will not decline to being a one-individual exercise of power.
Let the cabinet undergo transformation by all means. And into that transformation inject the idea that when cabinet government is in office, politics does not quite have room for advisors. When you have ministers heading the various departments, where do these advisors fit in? Abdul Jalil may not be right about everything, but he surely does make a good point about the place or otherwise of advisors around the prime minister.
We rest our case.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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