Too much clowning around

THE LOWER House is called the House of Representatives because it is the people's body. The members of this House are all elected by the people and have been entrusted with the responsibility of making laws, levying taxes and spending money on behalf of the people.

Certainly, the people did not elect people to this chamber to be clowns or to be nonchalant in approaching their business. This is exactly why The Gavel is always disappointed when partisan political issues elicit greater passion in Parliament than the people's business.

On Tuesday, the House descended into chaos as several members of parliament were fired up on party matters. Opposition MP Peter Bunting, representative for Central Manchester, in contributing to the debate on financing of political parties, stepped way out of line to introduce raw politics into the debate. He accused Daryl Vaz of having feted political contributors who were involved in criminal activities. Bunting had, unfortunately, included Vaz in the debate in his capacity as deputy treasurer of the Jamaica Labour Party. That should not have happened, because Vaz sits in the Parliament in two capacities only - MP for West Portland and minister with responsibility for information.

Members of the government then rushed to Vaz's defence, demanding a retraction from Bunting and an apology. Clive Mullings was cerebral in his call for Bunting to withdraw. Otherwise, Speaker Delroy Chuck found himself gavelling away as some members of the Government refused to accept his ruling that Bunting had sufficiently withdrawn the statement.

Most obnoxious

Leading that bunch was James Robertson, the mining and energy minister who, when closing the debate on the national energy policy, read every word of his speech as if he were in kindergarten. On the issue of nailing Bunting, Robertson was most obnoxious as he seized the opportunity for rabble rousing. The newspaper reported how he unplugged the microphone of Bunting and then chased away the orderly, who was attempting to reconnect the device.

The bout of poor behaviour by some members, in full view of students in the gallery, overshadowed the people's business. Only a few persons who were in Parliament on Tuesday would remember that two very important debates took place in the House that day. Finance Minister Audley Shaw, Robert Montague and government backbencher Mullings, as well as opposition members Lisa Hanna, Noel Arscot and Dr Morais Guy contributed to the debate on the energy policy. Issues such as liquefied natural gas versus coal, renewable energy and the licence of power-distribution monopoly - the Jamaica Public Service Company - were raised by those members.

No response

The debate was closed by Robertson, but unfortunately he did not bother to respond to any points directly raised by those speakers and opted instead to breach the Standing Orders by reading from a pre-prepared script in a monotone.

There was also the debate on the report of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) on political-party financing which received good contributions from Bunting, Mullings, Everald Warmington and Maxine Henry-Wilson. Warmington had questioned the way in which the ECJ operates and told Parliament that convention should not supersede legislative duties. Like Warmington, we believe the Parliament should not be a rubber stamp for any report. Our difficulty, though, is that our parliamentarians have not yet displayed that maturity to operate outside of a partisan political mode.

We view the report of the ECJ as critical in preserving democracy, and it is unfortunate that more Mullings and Henry-Wilsons were not in the House to contribute to the deliberations. Warmington's intervention was an important one too but, like so many instances in Gordon House, those persons elected to do the people's business either got caught up in sideshows or just sat in their seats, hoping that the mace would soon be lifted.

One wonders, though, what would have been Prime Minister Bruce Golding's contribution to the debate on the ECJ report, especially in light of Warmington's adversarial approach to the Commission. He had rudely described the members of the commission as acting as if they are "crown princes and emperors". Golding had warned in Parliament this year that the work of the ECJ was critical to our democracy and urged members not to do anything to disturb the convention of Parliament accepting reports of the ECJ without amending them. Warmington, we believe, has done enough to rock that boat and it now requires the maturity of all members to ensure our electoral process does not return to the days when skullduggery was king.

This is why it is important for members attending Parliament to leave their party shirts outside Gordon House. We have no difficulty with barbs being thrown across the floor, but it must be done with decorum. And when all is said and done, it is the people's business that must take priority. We are tired of the clowning around.

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