ISLAMABAD: Analysts keeping a watch on the Prime Minister’s Secretariat were confused when a teary-eyed Information Minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan tendered her resignation at a cabinet meeting in Karachi on Sunday, guessing what had prompted her to take the extreme step.
“I endorse your leadership (but) I think I am not competent enough to continue as a cabinet member and hence submit my resignation,” she said at the cabinet meeting telecast live.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and other members of his cabinet were completely caught off-guard when she offered to resign.
“The element of surprise in this whole drama is what prompted her to do so at this point and time. Is it a pre-emptive measure against those who don’t want to see her as information minister? Why did she choose this forum because everything is decided at the presidency?” asked a top official of the PM Secretariat.
Ms Awan’s selection as information minister by the PPP leadership in February this year had also come as a surprise. Many in the PPP are yet to figure out who influenced President Asif Ali Zardari to prefer her over other party lawmakers. “She is neither a good communicator nor is known as a party loyalist,” one of them said.
Ms Awan quit the PML-Q and joined the PPP just before the 2008 election. She earlier held the portfolio of population ministry which was devolved to the provinces after the passage of the 18th Amendment.
She is the third information minister of the present government after Sherry Rehman and Qamar Zaman Kaira.
Ms Awan has been facing criticism within the party for her failure to effectively defend the government in the ‘memogate’ scandal.
A PPP office-bearer said: “She is the chief spokesperson for the government. It’s her official duty to defend both the party and the government in these trying circumstances. But she is completely missing from the scene.”
Others believe she has no control over her ministry. In the presence of the prime minister during a National Assembly session last month she complained that some senior officials of her ministry did not listen to her. She specifically mentioned the name of PTV’s managing director who, according to her, did not comply with her orders.
According to a close aide, Ms Awan, being a directly-elected member of the National Assembly, wanted jobs for people of her constituency in the ministry, but could not do so because of opposition by officials.
He said that despite her best efforts she could not change top officials who were still in close contacts with their former bosses — Ms Rehman and Mr Kaira.
The aide said she had been facing resentment from within the party since her appointment as information minister. She is yet to be given a bullet-proof car reserved for information minister. She had to struggle even for an office of her ministry in the National Assembly, the aide said.