Phyllis Thomas, News Editor
THE TOUGH-TALKING Mayor of Kingston standing his ground about not giving up another inch of the city to vendors who insist on selling in the streets; the debate, speculations and inititial secrecy surrounding the presence of the International Monetary Fund in Jamaica; and the uproar in Parliament, all constituted the Main News last week.
With everything else that is happening around us, we could have done without the kind of activities at Gordon House Tuesday night, that reduced the country's Legislature to a curry goat parliament. Member of Parliament for South East St. Catherine, Dr. Paul Robertson, took literally, the maxim that says: "If you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen." He walked out of the House when certain questions were being asked of him and suggestions made that the Government had sold out the rights to any future development of railway service in the country. And if that was not bad enough, the Member of Parliament for East Central St. James Edmund Bartlett grabbed the Mace, the symbol of Parliament's authority and attempted to block the doorway, to prevent other members from leaving.
FLAWED ARGUMENT
Dr. Robertson, who is also Minister of Development, has since said that comes Tuesday, he is going to apologise for his action. Ed Bartlett on the other hand, has tried to justify his action saying that the House was already adjourned. But his argument is flawed. If, indeed, the House had been adjourned why was it necessary to block the doorway and try to prevent members from leaving? Wasn't it the Opposition members who immediately before that had protested that the House had not been properly adjourned? And most importantly, the only person who handles the Mace is the Marshall of the House. He is the person who brings it in so that the House sitting can be properly convened, and takes it out at the adjournment. So where does Mr. Bartlett get off grabbing the Mace even if it was after the adjournment? He too should apologise to the country.
And while Standing Order No. 43 (12) provides for the Speaker to adjourn the sitting peremptorily when there is grave disorder.
The institution of Parliament is supposed to be the most important in the country but it is certainly not treated as such. While we recognise and accept the spirited nature of many debates, there have been too many cases of boisterous behaviour of members of the House of Representatives.
I cannot remember seeing any serious fisticuffs as have occurred in other legislatures but we have had our share of unfortunate behaviour of parliamentarians in the House. Take for example this incident as reported in The Gleaner April last year. The headline was "House in uproar".
The report spoke of how the parliamentarians stopped just short of coming to blows during the first day's sitting of the Standing Finance Committee (SFC) set up to examine the Estimates of Expenditure for the 2002/2003 fiscal year.
"The proceedings disintegrated into a shouting match between government and opposition Members of Parliament for several minutes with House Speaker Violet Nielson, who chairs the SFC, unable to control the meeting," the report said. It related how it reached the point where Easton Douglas, then MP for South St. Andrew eventually crossed the floor, staring down both Karl Samuda and Audley Shaw, while thumping his chest and shouting at both men.
UPROAR AND INSULTS
In July 2001 Acting Speaker O.T. Williams left the House in uproar as both sides traded insults over his decision not to swear in Jamaica Labour Party representative Abe Dabdoub as a Member of Parliament.
The members were at it yet again. Mr. Dabdoub was declared the winner of the North East St. Catherine seat by a majority of 23 votes over the PNP' s Phyllis Mitchell in the court on June 29. When he turned up at the Gordon House to be sworn in, Mr. Williams, who had earlier agreed to swear him in, changed his mind stating that it was too late. So the House erupted.
There is simply no excuse for the kinds of behaviour that we are seeing in Parliament, which simply get in the way of effective representation and governance.
