POLITICIANS of any brand seldom sound straightforward. But PML-N Senator Chaudhry Jafar Iqbal conveniently forgot a lot when he blasted his opposition colleagues on Thursday for boycotting the Senate over a tiff with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

Not only the Opposition was violating parliamentary rules and the Constitution, he said, “it has the hidden agenda of derailing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to strengthen the parliament and the democratic system.”

While it is for the Opposition to answer the charge, parliamentary reporters can vividly recall that in the five months that he has been the prime minister of the country, Mian Nawaz Sharif graced the National Assembly with his presence only on five days – and the Senate not even once.

That unenviable record mocks at the PML-N’s sermonizing to the angry opposition Senators that “parliament is the place to resolve political differences, not the streets.” Prime Minister Sharif’s absence is particularly felt these stormy days when both the houses of the parliament are discussing the consequences for the country of the killing of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Chief, Hakeemullah Mehsud in a US drone attack.

Instead of the Leader of the House informing the National Assembly, which had suspended its routine agenda to discuss the serious event, about his all-important meeting with the US President Barack Obama, the house had to hear his point man Chaudhry Nisar accuse the US of scuttling peace talks that he had painstakingly arranged with the TTP.

Indeed, the prime minister’s assessment mattered most in the situation.

Syed Khursheed Shah, the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, rightly observed on Tuesday that the prime minister’s persistent absence was making people ask if the government really cared for the country and their feelings.

PTI’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi too wanted to know from the treasury benches if the prime minister would spare some time to tell the assmbly how the government intended to deal with the monster of militancy in the country. People have not been even told what the response of President Obama was when he raised his concerns over US drone attacks with him, said the former foreign minister.

PM Sharif attended the National Assembly in the June only to take oath as its member and to vote in the election of the Speaker and his own as leader of the house, the day his government presented the national budget, a joint session of the parliament addressed by the outgoing president Asif Ali Zardari and then to vote in his successor.

Yet he addressed the assembly only twice – his inaugural speech after being elected prime minister on June 5 and two weeks later to announce his government would try former president Gen Pervez Musharraf for treason.

PM Sharif has yet to grace the Senate with his presence. Opposition senators are up in arms these days against interior minister Chaudhry Nisar who virtually represents him the upper house of the parliament.

It all started when Chaudhry Nisar, speaking on behalf of the prime minister who also holds the portfolios of defence and foreign affairs, informed the Senate last week that since 2012 American drones had only targeted Islamist terrorists with their Hellfire missiles and no innocent civilian fell victim to them.

Senators on the opposition benches confronted him with the much higher figures reported by domestic sources and international organizations and demanded he withdraw the information and accept he provided wrong information to the Senate.

That Chaudhry Nisar is “absolutely” not willing to do and the agitated opposition parties, which hold the majority in the Senate, held a parallel session outside the parliament building on Wednesday.

Political observers feel that simply by appearing in the Senate the prime minister could have save the situation from turning ugly. After all the figures released official had spoken of hundreds of innocent civilians killed by the US drone in the last two years.

Whatever the truth – or the reason for producing a new figure, what is pinching the political classes more is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s apparent disinterest in the parliament.