THE RECORD-breaking hurricane season has less than a fortnight to go; but it has left more than physical damage in its wake. Much of it is property, private and public and, at the risk of stretching the point, also political.
The Jamaica Labour Party mayors and councillors across the nation can testify to that; not least among them, the intrepid First Citizen of Kingston, His Worship Mayor Desmond McKenzie. We regret his discomfiture at being felled by tear gas in a spasm of police indiscretion exercised in protecting the precincts of Jamaica House. That was the scene last Monday when a municipal team carrying a letter of complaint about broken roads failed to reach the Prime Minister.
The following day the scene shifted to Parliament, the highest forum in the land, which some people feel should be a place of dignity and decorum. We accept this view, but we are also influenced by a famous Churchillian dictum that "jaw-jaw is better than war-war".
And so it was last Tuesday as JLP MPs took the municipal baton from their parish colleagues to the Gordon House chamber and a shouting match rocked the place. It happened on the motion for adjournment when cross-talk about funding for road repairs got so rowdy that the Deputy Speaker, presiding, was forced to adjourn the sitting abruptly. Minister of Works, Robert Pickersgill, stoutly defended his statement that multimillion-dollar allocations had been made to the parish councils.
We think the minister got carried away by extravagant claims which he later sought to modify outside the House, declaring that not all the funds allocated were for road repairs. That did not prevent JLP councillors from challenging his figures and calling for his impeachment on the grounds that he had misled Parliament. Impeachment, however, has not been a part of our parliamentary tradition. There is precedent, however, for censuring MPs by formal vote in the chamber; but that could be avoided if Mr. Pickersgill opts to amplify his clarification to the satisfaction of his critics.
In retrospect, the tear gas sequel had some tender moments when Local Government Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, turned up at the Andrews Memorial Hospital to offer consolation, but Mayor McKenzie had been treated and sent back to his parlour.
The episode ultimately got Jamaica House benediction when the Prime Minister intervened.
Finally meeting with the municipal delegation last Thursday he used a familiar tactic, instructing a Cabinet sub-committee to examine the totality of infrastructural damage by the hurricanes. Jaw-jaw is indeed better than war-war.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
