ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday distinguished himself from his predecessor when he spent over an hour in the National Assembly, listening to MNAs’ problems.

PM Abbasi’s arrival in the lower house came as a surprise to most people; before his entrance, the usually-witty Rana Mohammad Hayat Khan impatiently gestured towards the speaker’s chair, exclaiming: “Come on, Mr Speaker, let’s get this over with”.

The tell-tale signs of the PM’s impending arrival were all there; the cabinet cohort was out in full force and the ministers’ front bench was full. The PM entered minutes before the start of proceedings to the sound of desk-thumping by the treasury benches, and made a bee-line for the opposition benches, where an astonished Nawab Yousuf Talpur and Abdul Rashid Godil greeted him with aplomb.

But before he had taken his seat, he was mobbed by lawmakers from the ruling party and its allies. Even after the speaker got proceedings underway, a stream of well-wishers and supplicants kept on coming up to the prime minister’s seat.

This was in sharp contrast with the almost imperious reserve usually demonstrated by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who preferred to keep his adoring followers at arm’s length, a reporter muttered in the press gallery.

PML-N MNA Dr Ramesh Vankwani was one of the lucky ones; not only did the PM read both his ‘chits’, but also pocketed them.

Be it the MQM members meeting him at his seat, or PML-Zia leader Ijazul Haq – who came up behind his seat and tapped him on the shoulder – PM Abbasi greeted everyone with warmth listened to whatever they had to say. Later, when attendance dwindled, he left his chair and moved over to the empty seats, so that those who came to speak to him could sit and say their peace.

“No one could ever imagine Nawaz doing the same,” a journalist observed, wryly.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2017