PML-N President and Prime Minister-elect Mian Nawaz Sharif has said that he will not only keep his cabinet small, but enforce a number of austerity measures, the most important being that he will not stay in PM House. He said this at a party consultative meeting on Wednesday at his Raiwind residence, when he said he would not have more than 26 ministers in his cabinet, and that Punjab ministers would not have as heavy protocol as they did now. It would be a pity that it took the present loadshedding crisis to move Mian Nawaz towards these measures, but it is likely that their enforcement will show the beneficial effects on the public exchequer. By limiting the size of the cabinet, Mian Nawaz will limit the number of freeloaders who want to live a luxurious lifestyle at the taxpayers’ expense, and by not using the PM House, he will be setting a personal example. The reduction in protocol for Punjab ministers should allow the differentiation between genuine security needs and the adoption of pomp and show in its name.
Where Punjab is to adopt a lower protocol for ministers, Chief Minister-designate Mian Shahbaz Sharif has written to PML-N Punjab MPAs, calling on them to adopt austerity measures to mitigate the effects of loadshedding. There must be further measures to prevent legislators and ministers from living a luxurious lifestyle at the taxpayer’s expense. At the same time, this must not serve as a substitute for actually doing something about loadshedding. The PML-N leadership must not think that these steps are a substitute for the relief they seek from loadshedding at the height of the hot weather. If the incoming government can ensure, as it thinks it can, that loadshedding is reduced two or three hours every six months, that should not provide an excuse for any relaxation in the measures. It is in the fitness of things for these measures to be replicated by other provincial governments, and there must be no excuses made about the need to maintain coalitions.
The nation does not need any alleviation in loadshedding to be followed by an increase in ministerial perks. Those perks have already made the voting public uneasy, and have caused the voter to punish the ministers of the previous cabinet, so many of whom were defeated in the last poll, including the head of the cabinet, the former Prime Minister himself. The PML-N should realise that austerity is required in good governance, and it is only when the Prime Minister and his ministers show they are beyond perks that they can rein in the bureaucracy’s extravagances.