NOW that the people have voted and been outwitted, a new parliament is in place, and a new president and prime minister have reached Constitution Avenue. All of last week, the focus was on the federal cabinet; names were being whispered knowingly all over Islamabad, as once the names of female actors would be when a new Yash Chopra film was in the offing. Will it be her, or her?

But, as the Urdu expression ‘waqt kam hai aur muqaabla sakht’ (denoting a race against time) goes, the prime minister hit the ground running. Days before finalising his cabinet, he was holding meetings on the economy and the way forward — which his government never figured out in the previous tenure.

It was in these sessions that the first hints were dropped with reference to who he was planning to take along. Consider the visuals of the first meeting on the economy he held, which were released to the media. Everyone but Ishaq Dar was present; and no one could miss how the footage had more close-ups of Atta Tarrar, the new PML-N MNA from Lahore, than anyone else, lending credence to conjecture about him being the new information minister. And, for once, the press got it right!

Before the heated discussions lost their intensity came the picture of the PM meeting the caretaker foreign affairs minister and Ishaq Dar. The visual more or less confirmed that the finance wizard of the party had been sent to the foreign affairs........

© Dawn