Oversized cabinet serves no purpose

With the start of American war on terror and American atrocities against the Muslims the position of Jamaat has assuredly improved in Bangladesh because even those Muslims who were thought to be indifferent to religion are made to realise that the other major religious followers of the world are not well washers of Muslims as such the Muslims of the world have no option other than standing together to save themselves from physical, economic, political or cultural onslaught. Thus Jamaat has an international appeal. No other Bangladeshi political party possesses this feature. It is therefore seen that Jamaat will be a real competitor for obtaining more seats in the parliament in near future.

BNP has become a big party mainly because of the failure and mistakes of Awami League. However its organisers deserve credit in bringing the party at this level. The main problem with BNP is that due to accommodation of too many opportunist politicians and retired bureaucrats of dubious past its front leaders are not seen as dedicated as they should have been. It was not discreet for BNP to accommodate such heterogeneous elements only to make its size big. Poor attendance of BNP MPs speak of their lack of interest in political process.

At the start of the present government it was expected that the prime minister would carefully watch the performance of the cabinet ministers for one year and consider replacement of ministers where necessary. Apparently this could not be done because party's interest was given preference to performance. Thus inefficiency, hidden or exposed, remained, in certain ministries like health, home, commerce, foreign affairs, communication and energy. Apart from this, we do not understand as to why 13 ministers have been made ministers without duty (MWD). Some of these MWDs are at least more experienced. They will, as far as we know, not make silly public statements to the humiliation of government. If the government has any respect for democracy how can it justify spending millions of taka to maintain more than a dozen ministers without any job? On the other hand, the finance minister is desperately trying to 'wipe out' the revenue shortfall and tackling the various financial and economic problems.

Some political analysts try to compare the efficiency of a caretaker government with that of a regular government. This does not seem to be acceptable because a caretaker government's job is mainly to hold the national election and to complete all arrangements for the start of a new regular government. Its life is ninety days. It is non-partisan. It has nothing to do with the activities of the political parties. It has not to bother about state policy matters. It has to perform only routine functions of the government.

It may be too late for the government to adopt measures like rightsizing or downsizing the cabinet. It is, however, time to utilise the services of those MWDs to save them from their political doom and to save the poor country from (criminal) wastage of public money and to control the bureaucracy from gaining more and more power at the cost of political mismanagement.

The government may not have a good number of efficient highminded politicians yet it must try to utilise those able few in building its image. It would not be appropriate for BNP to nurture the rich and the corrupt, people with influence over the underworld or people who are too docile to raise any issue strongly. To keep the reputation of the party high it is advisable to encourage really honest, dedicated (to the party), well educated and mature (politically) members.

It was perhaps a wrong assessment of BNP leadership to forget the popular adage that too many cooks spoil the broth. The party made too many commitments during the last election perhaps without thinking much about their implementation. The capability of the government severely eroded, perhaps due to politicisation of administration, dominance of certain junior ministers and declining level of efficiency of bureaucracy. Furthermore, it seemed BNP chairperson tried to follow what AL chief did during AL regime without caring much about outcome. BNP showed better performance during 1991-96 though Khaleda Zia's experience of running administration was nil at that time. This time it seems too many sycophants and some immature and inexperienced advisers, perhaps led her to take some wrong steps. Her authoritarian way of dealing with opposition, her way of dealing with the donors and her failure to control the terrorist activities committed by so called Islami fundamentalists are supposed to pay off negatively. The only way out appears to be adopting measures like the following:

(i) Creation of proper environment to start dialogue with the opposition on major issues like reformative measures in regard to caretaker government, strengthening the office of CEC etc;

(ii) The ministers who have failed to show good performance may be dropped from the cabinet immediately;

(iii) Quick decision may be taken about the MWDs;

(iv) Better understanding may be developed between cabinet ministers, PMO and advisers of Hawa Bhaban;

(v) The size of PMO should be reduced and ministers be encouraged to take decisions independently as far as possible;

(vi) The RAB may be made more accountable; and

(vii) Work should start for rightsizing the administration through reorganisation to keep the administrative expenses within a bearable limit; and

(viii) The process of politicisation must be contained as much as possible.

It is seen that Bangladesh is really weak at the implementation level. Almost all government decisions either flop or falter at the implementation stage. It will certainly improve if the process of politicisation stops and honest and neutral workers are allowed to work freely. Good decisions are meaningless if they cannot be implemented due to government's own creation of hindrances. It is unfortunate that too many ministers could do too little.

ABMS Zahur is a retired Joint Secretary.