SO sedate are the proceedings of the Senate usually that few outside that small, cosy world are even aware when the upper house of parliament is in session. But then, few have treated members of the upper house with the arrogance and petulance that Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan displayed this week, leading to a three-day boycott of the Senate proceedings by the combined opposition that has continued into the weekend break. It all began with the anomaly in the figures presented by the interior minister on victims of drone strikes and of terrorism attacks since June this year. ANP Senator Zahid Khan pounced on the obviously incorrect figures, leading to a prickly response by the interior minister that inflamed the opposition benches. Parliamentary spats are not uncommon and are usually resolved quickly enough. But then, parliament has not seen many of Chaudhry Nisar’s disposition.

The problem of course is about more than just one man’s ego. The PML-N has often followed Nawaz Sharif’s lead in treating parliament and its traditions as an inconvenience to be tolerated. But the problem in the present Senate is more magnified: the PML-N has only a dozen-odd senators in the 104-member upper house and with that position to remain more or less fixed until the next Senate elections scheduled for early 2015, the party does not seem interested in bringing energy or focus to a chamber in which it is a distinct minority. Add to that Chaudhry Nisar’s notoriously choleric attitude towards fellow legislators and it makes for a ruckus of unseemly proportions. The solution is patently clear: the interior minister should go back to the floor of the Senate and mollify the aggravated members. But perhaps he first means to show he cares little about what others say.