Promises are seldom kept by the rulers

Like Ayub Khan, Nawaz Sharif also fancies Murree. More often than not, he tries to spend some days at its ethereal heights. Lady luck smiles on the inhabitants of those hill stations which the rulers fall in love with. The municipal authorities of these hill stations take extra care to ensure that they are spick and span and their sanitation system is also in order, at least during the days when the vvips happen to be there
The PM the other day presided over a marathon session of his cabinet in Murree. One of the decisions taken in the meeting was that the federal cabinet would be enlarged and a reshuffle in the cabinet might also take place.
We are a poor country and we cannot afford a bloated cabinet whose size needs to be kept as small as possible. Time was when there was only 6 ministers in the KPK including its CM. There was a time when eyebrows used to be raised if the number of federal ministers exceeded 12.
The first thing which a PM does in this country after forming his cabinet is that he announces that after every three months he would review its performance and in case if any minister failed to deliver he would sack him. Seldom have we seen anybody shown the door by him There is no tradition on the part of ministers in this country resigning of their own volition in case any thing went haywire in their ministry. They seldom accept responsibility of any wrong committed by any one under their control and conveniently pass on the buck to somebody in the lower echelon of their ministry by making him a scapegoat.
One is reminded here of a rail accident in India in which a number of passengers got killed. The then Indian railway minister Lal Bahadar Shastri who later became India’s prime minister also resigned taking full responsibility for that rail accident. Incidentally after that accident a similar rail accident occurred in Pakistan in which a number of passengers were killed also. When a newsman drew the attention of our railway minister to Shastri’s resignation in similar circumstances our railway minister shamefacedly replied . I am a Muslim and a Muslim is not supposed to follow an example set up by an infidel.