The Senate is filled with strong personalities and rightly so as this allows for spirited debates. However, it is important that senators keep in mind that the nation is watching and will be impacted by the proceedings. They must be able to rise above personal feelings to deal with the business of the country.

A reset in Parliament

24 Dec 2021

MAYBE OVER the holidays Prime Minister Andrew Holness will have a quiet word with Kamina Johnson Smith, his foreign minister and the leader of government business in the Senate, and that after the recess she will end her walkouts of the Upper House during speeches by opposition member, Lambert Brown.

The first or second time she did it, Mrs Johnson Smith might have earned the benefit of the doubt that her action was an appropriate response to Mr Brown’s behaviour, whatever the specifics of the charge. But, notwithstanding the support she received last week from other Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) senators, Mrs Johnson Smith’s continuation of the boycott now rings like a puerile schoolyard peeve, which adds no value to the work of the Senate. Rather, it detracts from Senator Johnson Smith’s critical leadership of the chamber.

In this regard, at that session Mr Holness should have with the Senate leader, he might consider inviting the Speaker of the House, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, and the Senate’s president, Tom Tavares-Finson, for a broader discussion on resetting the management of the legislature.

This newspaper has been forced, on several occasions, to call Mrs Dalrymple-Philibert’s attention to her failure to rise above the partisan fray and the threat that it poses to her speakership. We were also recently driven to do the same with respect to Mr Tavares-Finson’s rant in the Senate after opposition members voted against maintaining the states of public emergency. If indeed Parliament, in the new year, will grapple with weighty matters of constitutional reform, as Prime Minister Holness has suggested it might, then mature, even-handed management of debates will be important, lest we lose the plot.

DISTINCTIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS

With respect to Mrs Johnson Smith and Mr Brown, both are known, even among colleagues (though it mightn’t be said before their faces), for some very distinctive personality traits. She, at least in public life, is notoriously thin-skinned. Even the mildest criticism is often perceived as an attack or personal slight.

Lambert Brown is a quick-witted debater with an elephantine recall and a readiness to boomerang his opponents’ every and often long-ago statement – including what one may consider innocuous and benign – against them. And he is a certifiable needler. Mrs Johnson Smith is the kind of personality upon which Mr Brown’s debating style thrives. Both have often clashed in the years in the Senate.

Matters, however, took a sharper turn in July when, during debate on Jamaica’s Shiprider Agreement with the United States (US), Mrs Johnson Smith accused Mr Brown of advocating for ‘dons’ after his repeat of the remarks by an alleged former east Kingston gangster about the state of crime in Jamaica. The alleged criminal was among several people who were nabbed attempting to enter the US illegally by sea.

Later, during a debate on Jamaica extradition law, Mrs Johnson Smith walked out of the Senate after Mr Brown accused her of defaming former senator, A.J. Nicholson, who she had accused of sending her harassing and threatening emails. There were disputes over the character of the emails. Mr Brown called Mrs Johnson Smith a liar and a hypocrite.

When pressed to withdraw his unparliamentary language, Mr Brown quipped: “I now say her statements were hypocritical and untruthful, and I stand by that.”

Last week, Jamaica Labour Party senators complained that newspaper (including The Gleaner’s) reporting of the Johnson Smith-Brown stand-off “ignored the generally abhorrent conduct of Senator Brown in the Senate, which has been the source of much discourse and debate during his tenure”.

”Instead they have made a concerted effort to focus negative attention on the Leader of Government business, ignoring that several members of our caucus often depart from the Senate Chamber when Senator Brown makes presentations,” they said in a statement. “This is in protest to his consistent displays of disrespectful, discourteous and unparliamentary conduct.”

CANNOT BE GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY

Those walkouts have, on at least one occasion, left the Senate without a quorum of eight of its 21 members, which meant that its work could not continue. That cannot be good for the country or the perception of governance and public administration, especially with Parliament’s order paper and the marshalling of its business being under the control of the Government side – which in the Senate means primarily Mrs Johnson Smith.

Parliamentary debates are expected to be robust, but engaged with decency, decorum, respect and civility. Which does not mean debaters should be trenchant, ready to call out weaknesses and flaws in each other’s positions – untruths and hypocrisy even. If, indeed, Mr Brown consistently crosses the line of robustness to being uncouth, he ought to be reprimanded by his party colleagues, and censured by the Senate.

While we make no judgement on the current matter, it is worth noting that a debater’s tone, including it being distinctly Jamaican, or that the debater may discomfit people with cutting rhetoric, doesn’t necessarily equate to being philistine. In the event, there may be a sense and worth lost because people failed to listen. Parliamentary representation is also about personal discipline and being able to lift oneself above personal prejudices.

Perhaps the general atmosphere in Parliament might be helped by periodic private and frank discussions between Prime Minister Holness and the opposition leader, Mark Golding, on critical national issues, away from the public stage and the need to perform for constituents. In other words, Mr Holness should reprise the Vale Royal talks, which has been useful for previous leaders.

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