In Tuesday's reshuffle of the federal cabinet the portfolios of five ministers were changed and two new ones - political affairs and minorities affairs - were created. Six new ministers and three ministers of state also took oath of office. Five of the six new ministers have been upgraded from the position of minister of state or advisor.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz later explained that the reshuffle would improve the government's performance, implying thereby that the performance of those whose portfolios have been changed was not good enough. But a more convincing explanation would be that the reshuffle and expansion have been made with an eye on the general elections due next year.
The most noticeable, and perhaps surprising, change relates to the rough-mannered but a loyal defender of everything that the powers-that-be wished to be defended in public, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, who has been shifted to the ministry of railways.
He has been replaced with the tactful, though not particularly assertive, Mohammad Ali Durrani. Sheikh Rashid tried to put a brave face on things, saying that he had actually wanted the railway ministry. But his associates sought to show him as some sort of a martyr as they claimed that the government's recent overtures towards the PPP Chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, had a connection with his removal as the chief government spokesman.
However, it is hardly a secret that there were many who found it difficult to deal with his rather abrasive style of functioning and his past association with some Kashmiri mujuhideen.
Presumably, another unhappy person over the change in portfolio is Nilofar Bakhtiar who while transiting from advisorship to ministership has been shunted from the more influential ministry of women and youth affairs to tourism. She has been replaced with Sumaira Malik, whose claim to fame rests on her blood ties with a former president Farooq Ahmad Leghari, a close ally of President General Pervez Musharraf and a prime ministerial hopeful for the post-election government.
The PPP-Patriots, who deserted their original party to become part of the Musharraf political construct, have fared quite badly in the new set-up. Secretary General of the group, Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, has been removed as minister of Kashmir affairs and Northern Areas (Kana) and handed the portfolio of environment, which is not such a climb down, but still a lot less important responsibility than his first portfolio of interior ministry and the recent Kana.
The group is also said to have wanted its minister of state for information, Aneesa Zeb Tahirkheli, to become minister of state for interior, instead she got education. Yet another setback for the Patriots is the reward a defector from their ranks, Khalid Lund, has received. Lund, it may be mentioned, left the Patriots recently to join the PML-Q, and has now been appointed as minister of state for defence.
Depending on who is looking at the situation, it may amount to rubbing salt in the wound or seem like a taste of the Patriots' own medicine. From the general public's perspective, a fresh increase in the already record big size of the federal cabinet is surely an occasion to lament the contradictions in the government's claims and actions vis-à-vis the need to observe austerity.