Is our parliament a rudderless ship?

On the face of it, the suggestion of opposition leader Syed Khursheed Shah is completely accurate. According to him, an ad needs to be placed in media to find out prime minister Imran Khan because he is missing from the National Assembly ever since his election as leader of the house. Absenteeism in parliament now seems to be the favourite prime-ministerial pastime. Nawaz Sharif too had lost his way to the house. Is Imran Khan no different from Nawaz Sharif? The latter became prime minister only because he was elected as leader of house - a house that he no longer visits. And as he opts to remain away the lawmaking, the prime responsibility of the National Assembly, has come to a standstill. Accepted, the Opposition in the National Assembly is too formidable, but then it is also a fact that his government has a majority in the National Assembly where it can pass bills. The bills passed by the National Assembly would be rejected by the Senate where the government has no majority. That this argument is quite plausible is also a fact. Pakistan needs extensive lawmaking to upgrade the existing legal system and to cope with emerging realities. Should the Senate reject a bill passed by the National Assembly it would be then the onerous responsibility of the Opposition to justify its action.
In democratic parlance, a parliament is a strong reflection of distilled wisdom of people. It embodies their hopes and charts for them the way forward. People send their representatives to assemblies to make laws, air their grievances and offer solutions. Of course, in elected houses there should be heated discussions and contending debates. But that done there should be lawmaking, as they are there essentially to do lawmaking. The kind of effort that is made at the national level to elect assemblies and the amount of money that goes into their day-to-day working obviously call for their productive outcome. Unfortunately, our successive elected houses have failed to come up to the expectations of their electorate - a failure that in the past very often prompted welcome of non-elected powers at the helm. We are optimistic such a failure is not in the making, and that kind of recourse is irrevocably outmoded. The situation is better, but there are no grounds for complacency. Given our hot borders, terrorists' unquenchable thirst for blood, rampant lawlessness and a battered economy, the present National Assembly is confronted with some formidable challenges. There is no denying that the Imran Khan administration inherited these testing times, but that should be just no excuse or reason for a feeling of uncritical satisfaction with one's performance.
And this is where the leadership comes in to do its part. Didn't we see British Prime Minister Theresa May so furtively fighting for the Commons' support to her Brexit deal? In parliamentary democracy, the floor of parliament is the most productive platform. Unfortunately, that seems to be no more the case in the present day; and the present day is the period of history that we are in now. Nawaz Sharif often preferred to stay away; his successor, Imran Khan, too remains absent from the house. One may, therefore, ask whether or not Imran's pre-election rebuke to Nawaz over the latter's prolonged absence from parliament was a mere pretense. Prime Minister Khan is happened to have paid visits to quite a few friendly countries, and secured the much-needed financial support. He ought to have briefed the elected representatives of people through his presence in the lower house. We believe his regular attendance of the Senate and National Assembly would help break the stalemate and promote legislative work without any further loss of time.