THE prime minister must have taken note of the moves to amend the Senate’s rules of procedure to make the chief executive’s presence in the upper house compulsory at least once a week. The need for such a move would not have arisen if Nawaz Sharif had attended parliamentary sessions regularly. As of now, Mr Sharif is upholding a rather unsavoury tradition: most Pakistani prime ministers have never been habitués of parliament. Obviously, they failed to realise that one of their duties is to strengthen democratic traditions by being a regular participant of parliamentary sessions. Mr Sharif’s record is among the worst of any Pakistani prime minister — he didn’t attend a single session of the upper house during the parliamentary year ending last month. And unlike Yousuf Raza Gilani, who regularly participated in debates, Mr Sharif’s record of presence in the lower house is even worse. He attended a National Assembly session on Jan 29 after a gap of seven months, and then was last seen in the people’s house on Feb 26. Since then, he has not been visible in parliament. No one should be surprised if his ministers take their cue from him, for his interior minister has been accused by senators of having resorted to an undeclared boycott of the upper house since those November days when opposition members in the Senate held sessions outside the parliament building, and the senators wanted Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to apologise for allegedly giving faulty information.

Granted, Mr Sharif is a busy person but then so are prime ministers of other parliamentary democracies. In Britain, the prime minister himself answers MPs’ questions and stands the booing and heckling that is an intrinsic part of a parliamentarian’s life. That Mr Sharif should absent himself from a house where his party has a majority is astonishing and demands an explanation. By appearing in parliament only rarely Mr Sharif is doing no service to himself or to democracy in a country that needs strong parliamentary traditions. ‘A clash of institutions’ is often talked about and feared in Pakistan. The best way to pre-empt such a malignant event is to strengthen parliament and make it a truly sovereign body that commands the respect of unelected institutions.