Gilani forced to delay cabinet reshuffle

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was forced by a powerful lobby of some ‘influential’ ministers to delay the much-awaited cabinet reshuffle and his plan to reduce its size at the eleventh hour earlier this week, informed sources said.

The prime minister, who changed portfolios of three ministers on Thursday, was all set to fulfil his long desire of overhauling and reducing his cabinet on Tuesday evening, but was told by ‘his boss in the party’ to put off the plan for some time.

After separate meetings of two groups of federal and state ministers with President Asif Zardari on Monday, the media reported that Tuesday’s cabinet meeting would be the last as the prime minister intended to reshuffle and trim it.

It was also the day the Supreme Court resumed hearing on petitions challenging the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance.

The prime minister, the sources said, was considering reducing the size of his much-criticised large cabinet by merging a number of ministries on the advice of the finance ministry and to relieve the NRO-tainted ministers.

He had already sought a not-needed permission from the PPP’s Central Executive Committee for his plan at a meeting last month. Soon after the meeting, the prime minister consulted his confidants and also President Zardari, who is co-chairman of the PPP, and tried to convince them about the plan.

The sources said that some ministers, particularly Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar and Shah Mehmood Qureshi, had contacted the president directly or through ‘messengers’ to complain that the prime minister was not taking the entire party along at a time of crisis. The three ministers were aspirants for the office of the prime minister after the Feb 2008 elections.

NRO BENEFICIARIES: According to an insider, a group of ministers who are NRO beneficiaries told the president during a meeting that if they were removed on moral grounds, the opposition and the media would start a campaign for his (the president’s) resignation.

This was perhaps the moot point that led the president to ask Mr Gilani to put off his plan till the Supreme Court’s verdict on the NRO petitions. Interior Minister Rehman Malik, according to the insider, spearheaded the campaign for delaying the cabinet reduction plan.

Political experts believe that the postponement has for the time being saved the ruling party, but the crisis within it persists.