Gang tag is our own doing - Simpson Miller

ONE SENIOR parliamentarian is suggesting that the political parties whose members sit in Gordon House as legislators have earned the designation as gangs because of how "they treat each other".

Portia Simpson Miller, the leader of the opposition and one of the longest-serving members of parliament, was blunt in her pronouncement during her contribution to the Budget Debate yesterday.

"We are the ones who allow ourselves to be called gangs because of how we treat each other," she said.

"The disrespect for each other. ... What we say on the platforms, and we only say good things about each other when the person cannot hear one word that we are saying."

This newspaper, through its editorial, has labelled parliamentarians gangs of Gordon House owing to the parties' perceived appetite for promoting narrow partisan interest over national priorities.

Last weekend, former Central Manchester MP, John Junor, dismissed the gang label. Speaking at a People's National Party rally in Royal Flats, Manchester, Junor, who is also a former Cabinet minister, said the term "gangs of Gordon House" was contemptuous.

He conceded that there are corrupt politicians, but asserted that if the newspaper's intention was to improve the country's politics, the approach was counterproductive.

offensive, says vaz

Daryl Vaz, from the Office of the Prime Minister, said he found the characterisation offensive.

"It is a bitter pill to swallow when you can classify, so generally, members of political parties as members of gangs, bearing in mind what gangs are perceived to be," Vaz said at the weekly post-Cabinet press conference held on Wednesday.

On Monday, Professor Hopeton Dunn, the director of the Caribbean Programme in Telecommunications Policy and Management at the Mona School of Business, suggested that the newspaper take a different approach.

"We should be more concerned about investigating and exposing gangster behaviour than engage in broad-brush name calling," Dunn told media practitioners celebrating World Press Freedom Day.

"We are not all very happy with the performance and with the conduct of many of our political leaders, but, after all, they are our representatives," he added.