Question Hour

This refers to the news report, ‘Resolution to bind PM to answer questions in NA rejected’ (January 13). Nawaz Sharif has the unique honour of serving the country as an elected prime minister for the third time. But he has not learnt any lessons from his previous terms and has been following the same old patterns in his political dealings.

If we want to strengthen parliamentary democracy we must adhere to the democratic norms. One of them is that parliamentarians put questions to the prime minister during the PM’s Question Hour session. Every British prime minister answers questions put to him by MPs. But our premier has shied away from this tradition. One of the major functions of the prime minister is to attend parliament regularly but our globetrotting PM has no time to appear in the House. When he was in trouble he took shelter behind parliament. By rejecting the proposal to make the PM’s appearance compulsory during the PM’s Question Hour, the PML-N has done a great disservice to the nation.

Javaid Bashir

Lahore