Some in the ruling party openly, and some discreetly, have begun expressing concerns over concentration of powers in the Prime Minister Office.
Sources in the PML-N have told Dawn that there’s considerable resentment in the party against what they call the prime minister’s over-reliance on bureaucracy.
The sources said that even some ministers had protested over lack of control of their ministries. According to them, the PM Office not only keeps close tabs on all ministries but also intervenes in their routine affairs.
“The federal cabinet exists only on paper; on the ground every government department is being micro-managed through bureaucrats, both serving and retired,” said a senior PML-N leader.
Ministers are not even allowed to hire personal secretaries of their choice. A minister had a ‘shouting match’ with a senior cabinet colleague over the matter and threatened to quit the portfolio if demand for a secretary of choice wasn’t accepted.
Similarly, ministers have been barred from appointing and transferring staff in their departments without prior approval of the PM Office. The prime minister recently turned down requests from two ministers for transfer of their secretaries.
“By all means, it’s a highly centralised government and the PM Office is at the centre of all powers. The concept of decentralisation of power and collective responsibility, which forms the core of the parliamentary form of government, doesn’t exist here,” said another PML-N leader.
He confirmed that ministers were not allowed to run their ministries independently. During cabinet meetings, he said, the ministers dared not ask any question, what to talk of offering views that differed from those of the premier.
According to him, this is the sole reason why ministers don’t take interest in attending the proceedings of parliament and answering questions.
During the last National Assembly session, the treasury benches were assailed by the opposition for ministers’ absence from the house.
“Why should ministers go to the house and set themselves up for tough questions when they can hardly do anything worthwhile in their ministries,” argued the party leader.
At the moment, the prime minister is holding portfolios of important ministries like foreign affairs, defence, communications and law.
Meanwhile, the PML-N leadership is known for running highly centralised governments. From 2008 to 2013, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif single-handedly ran the provincial government.
However, this time he has shared some of his powers with his son Hamza Shahbaz.
On the other hand, the chief minister is sharing the burden of his elder brother at the centre. He regularly attends meetings of the water and power ministry and the planning division.
Besides the PM Office, Shahbaz Sharif also keeps tabs on the federal departments. A federal government official confirmed that bureaucrats had been instructed to regularly send progress reports on federal government departments to the chief minister.
The prime minister’s tendency to prefer bureaucrats over politicians is also evident in the appointment of his advisers and special assistants. Three of his four advisers and special assistants — Tariq Fatemi, Sartaj Aziz and Khawaja Zaheer — are former bureaucrats.
Only Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, who has been appointed as special assistant to the prime minister and enjoys the status of a federal minister, is a politician. However, Mr Zehri’s is a totally different story.
Mr Zehri was a strong candidate for the post of chief minister of Balochistan, which eventually went to Dr Abdul Malik Baloch of the National Party. The prime minister rewarded Mr Zehri with the status of federal minister only to placate him, according to the sources.
Since the general elections, many senior party members have been sidelined. PML-N’s Secretary General Iqbal Zafar Jhagra is still waiting for some important assignment.
Initially, there were reports that he would be made governor of his home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. If a senior member of the PML-N is to be believed, Mr Jhagra even finds difficulty in holding a meeting with the prime minister, who is the party’s president.
“What message are we sending to the party’s rank and file who remained loyal to the party leadership during Gen [Pervez] Musharraf’s rule,” a party leader said. He criticised the present lot of prime minister’s advisers who were deliberately not allowing genuine party workers to go near the PM Office.
The PML-N leader also recalled how the party loyalists were ignored when the prime minister picked former British lawmaker Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar as the Punjab governor. Earlier, Rana Iqbal was tipped as governor, but he was made speaker of the Punjab assembly instead.
Former Sindh chief minister Syed Ghous Ali Shah, who went through difficult times during the Musharraf regime, met a similar fate. Mr Shah resigned as president of the party’s Sindh chapter in August, after the party refused to accommodate him in the federal government.
“Once in power, the party workers expect respect from their leadership, both in terms of reward and recognition. But that’s missing from our government,” said the party source.
Worse still, no sincere effort was made to address Mr Shah’s grievances, he added.
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