In case you happen to witness the National Assembly or the Senate session in progress you would soon find yourself dozing off in the middle of long, tiring speeches flooding the floor of the house. Sometimes they are decently crispy too but those moments do not last forever.

Although there is something very special about the evening sessions that usually last till late in the night, it’s not as if the ministers and the parliamentarians are not readily available to talk on the agenda of the day. It is their disappearance from the building that is amazingly smooth and subtle that you hardly believe they are gone till you get to pass by a television set tuned in the parliament lobby, showing some current affairs program, 

Initially you think it could be a recording from the previous day but the exact color of tie or the shirt and a disturbing sign of LIVE television occupying the TV screen leaves you in doubt about the on air status of the show

The PTV days are no more, when the politicians had to watch the 9’o clock bulletin that summed up the whole parliamentary day in one go. The private channels offer them a platform where they get the best of the air time, the prime time – once considered ideal for dramas. 

The current affairs shows do not limit their audience to the people sitting in the galleries. There isn’t the ‘3 to 5 minutes’ time restriction for everyone but the leader of the house or the opposition leader, either.

It won’t be unfair to say that television shows give them a chance to talk directly with the millions sitting in different corners of the world. One would not deny that these shows have played a vital role in keeping few individuals alive not in just Pakistani politics, but also in their respective constituencies. Their representation might be limited to one or two seats in the house, but as the ‘guest’ for the TV shows, their rhetoric takes them a long way.

It is worth mentioning how their demand to appear on the show is directly related to the sort of ‘political crisis’ bothering the nation. The sedate tempered members appear usually when the aggression is on hold; the times when political parties decide to show their ‘wild’ side. Mostly the quick tempered, hard-to-crack and the ones apt to reiterate the hardcore party policy adorn the TV screens.  The media in such cases knows very well how to play along the sentiments broiling in political circles.

Their talk is hardly any different from how they talk on the floor; except the language sometimes that they get away with on the TV is expunged during the session. So basically the programs are providing the members with less of a ‘censorship’ and a larger access to connect to people

Meanwhile, the session under progress skips the names of the members who slowly and steadily had made their way to the television studios, with a file in one hand and sometimes clutching a cell phone in the other – such ‘unceremonious’ departures are sudden. At such point the speaker at times ‘reprimands’ the members from the treasury benches over not being present to answer the queries but the opposition members bask in a lenient environment and the disappearing act continues.

Is it more important for the representatives to stay in the house and raise the points worth debating, to bring the legislation required, to amend the laws that are obsolete in the house or is it more important to use the media to share their ideas with the masses?

It won’t be of much use to point out if their focus on being on TV adversely affects the system or not but it is surely a comparatively new trend that is occupying our financially  well-compensated elected members of the parliament, enjoying their glorious time on screens.

Geti Ara is a story-teller, journalist and a documentary maker