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Highest Ranking Muslim U.S. Political Appointee Promoted
by Jamshed Bokhari
WASHINGTON (IslamOnline) – Islam Siddiqui, current Executive Assistant to the Secretary at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), will be promoted to the post of Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs within the same department, reports the American Muslim Council (AMC).
United States President Bill Clinton announced his intention to nominate him for the post last Friday.
The promotion will take Siddiqui another step higher from his current post where he gained notoriety as the highest-ranking Muslim in the U.S. government.
Although a step up, Siddiqui is a political appointee whose position may be relinquished as a new presidential administration, led by President-elect George W. Bush, moves into the White House on January 20th.
There are well over 6,000 politically appointed positions within the U.S. government, and Bush reportedly has 21,000 applications for those jobs.
Although it is not guaranteed that a political appointee of an outgoing presidential administration will ultimately have to vacate his/her position, most political appointees leave their office when the administration that appointed them relinquishes the executive office.
Nowhere is this truer than in high profile appointments like Secretaries of departments and positions immediately beneath them. Lower level appointments are no safer either.
In an unwritten, but well-understood rule in Washington, with the relinquishment of the White House by one administration, especially to that of another political party, political appointees from the outgoing administration are supposed to voluntarily retire.
If they do not, either through hope of continuing on within the new administration, or hopes that their position will go unnoticed, many have been blatantly told that it is time to leave. This has happened within Siddiqui’s own department, the USDA.
The announcement of Siddiqui’s nomination came before Bush was declared President-elect, when Al Gore’s hopes of attaining the office were still somewhat realistic.
Observers state that it is somewhat perplexing that such a nomination to a post would come so late in, and towards the end of, a presidential administration.
Now that Bush has become President-elect, Siddiqui’s nomination to the new position may or may not ever be filled, depending upon the fast approaching political winds of change entering Washington in January.
However, his previous position already granted him status as the highest-ranking Muslim in the U.S. government. Siddiqui held that position for a good part of Clinton’s tenure in the White House.
Previously, before his current Executive Assistant to the Secretary position, Siddiqui served as Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs from 1997 to 1999.
The AMC reports that Siddiqui received his BS in Plant Protection from Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University in Pantnagar, India, and an MS and PhD in Plant Pathology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
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