Is there a con­scious­ness amongst the po­lit­i­cal elite of Trinidad and To­ba­go that they have a role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be in­volved in set­ting the lan­guage, tem­per­a­ture and qual­i­ty of pub­lic dis­course?

Do they un­der­stand that their pub­lic lan­guage and be­hav­iours im­pact and can es­tab­lish lan­guage-use plat­forms for the pop­u­la­tion?

“If de Priest could play, who is me,” the lyrics of the Mighty Cypher, in­di­cat­ing that the be­hav­iour of an ex­em­plar is good enough for him to fol­low.

Back in the 1970s, Ex­plain­er com­plained that the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans “were kicks­ing in Par­lia­ment”.

In the present, it has gone far be­yond that. Months ago, on the eve of the call­ing of the gen­er­al elec­tion, then-gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who even­tu­al­ly had a stint as prime min­is­ter, made a quite sala­cious and vul­gar re­mark against then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, which was at com­plete odds with the dig­ni­ty and deco­rum ex­pect­ed in a na­tion­al Par­lia­ment.

When he was Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his fa­ther were dis­graced by a then gov­ern­ment MP from To­ba­go, al­leg­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on the part of the two.

He, Dr Row­ley, al­so had his day of be­ing the ac­cuser of UNC MPs with­out, up to to­day, be­ing able to sub­stan­ti­ate his in­fa­mous Email Gate al­le­ga­tions of mas­sive fraud in the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has tak­en on the role of be­ing a “Bad­john” in her lan­guage and in­tent against both mem­bers on her side and the Op­po­si­tion. Just last Fri­day in the Par­lia­ment, she sought to warn op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert not to point at her, “cause I’ll cuff you down.”

Since re­turn­ing to of­fice in April, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has on oc­ca­sion laced her lan­guage with a de­gree of vi­o­lence that is re­al­ly not ex­pect­ed of a stateswoman. More­over, in in­stances, the in­tent of the lan­guage has been quite puz­zling and not match­ing the need for a Prime Min­is­ter to set the tone for pub­lic dis­course.

In re­cent weeks, we have al­so seen com­ing from an or­di­nary cit­i­zen - and tar­get­ed at the Prime Min­is­ter - lan­guage and al­leged in­tent at in­cite­ment, which law en­force­ment has tak­en ac­tion against.

With­out in any man­ner sug­gest­ing that lan­guage and un­found­ed ac­cu­sa­tions made in the Par­lia­ment and else­where by lead­ers jus­ti­fy the al­leged be­hav­iour of a mem­ber of the pub­lic, the fact is that such lan­guage and be­hav­iours by ex­em­plars pos­sess in­flu­enc­ing qual­i­ties.

A lan­guage cul­ture, there­fore, must be cul­ti­vat­ed at the high­est lev­el of gov­er­nance and in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment by ex­em­plars in thought and ac­tion. Poor qual­i­ty and de­grad­ing lan­guage used in the Par­lia­ment can sure­ly in­flu­ence how pub­lic dis­course is car­ried out.

It has been es­tab­lished both here and else­where that par­lia­men­tary de­bate and in­ter­ac­tion are not meant to be fit for Sun­day School class­es. How­ev­er, what is re­quired is that which can el­e­vate in qual­i­ty in rea­son­ing and lan­guage di­rect­ed to in­form, even to ed­u­cate the so­ci­ety. Sure­ly the in­tent is not for the Par­lia­ment to mir­ror rum-shop talk, which may have a mea­sure of ap­pro­pri­ate­ness in the bar by the junc­tion, but is to­tal­ly out of place in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment in which the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­duct the busi­ness of the coun­try.

Stan­dards of lan­guage and be­hav­iour do not slide with­out cause and in­flu­ence.