Twelve days have now elapsed since Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates sub­mit­ted her let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on May 1, yet Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­mains locked in an in­def­i­nite state of in­er­tia.

This lengthy fail­ure to act now threat­ens to un­der­mine the very foun­da­tion of the Op­po­si­tion par­ty, whose po­lit­i­cal and moral stand­ing Beck­les must well ap­pre­ci­ate as a long­stand­ing mem­ber of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

For a par­ty that has spent the bet­ter part of this term ag­gres­sive­ly de­mand­ing the heads of the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials over mat­ters of ac­count­abil­i­ty and per­for­mance, this paral­y­sis can jus­ti­fi­ably be deemed by many as hyp­o­crit­i­cal.

If Beck­les, who took over lead­er­ship of the PNM fol­low­ing the de­feat suf­fered at the hands of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress last year, has a le­git­i­mate rea­son for not want­i­ng to ac­cept the res­ig­na­tion over John-Bates’ ap­par­ent un­eth­i­cal par­lia­men­tary con­duct, say­ing noth­ing for so long is sim­ply not the way to go.

As a sea­soned at­tor­ney and politi­cian, Beck­les is well aware that while it is easy to de­mand high stan­dards of your op­po­nents, the true test of lead­er­ship is whether you can ap­ply those same stan­dards to your­self.

Or­di­nar­i­ly, the na­tion­al spot­light is on the par­ty in pow­er as cus­to­di­ans of the pub­lic purse, but when mat­ters of in­tegri­ty fall square­ly in­to the Op­po­si­tion’s lap, the pub­lic al­so ex­pects a clear, prin­ci­pled re­sponse, not a 12-day si­lence that sug­gests a search for po­lit­i­cal con­ve­nience over eth­i­cal clar­i­ty.

One can­not point a fin­ger at the Gov­ern­ment bench­es on eth­i­cal is­sues while clutch­ing a res­ig­na­tion let­ter for near­ly two weeks and seem­ing to ex­cuse un­ac­cept­able po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour by Sen­a­tor John-Bates, who was caught red-hand­ed con­tribut­ing to a wit­ness state­ment for for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ahead of his pre­sen­ta­tion be­fore the very par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee on which she sat—The Com­mit­tee on Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions.

Beck­les must there­fore dis­abuse her­self of the no­tion that this is­sue will sim­ply van­ish if ig­nored long enough.

In the mod­ern po­lit­i­cal land­scape, si­lence is in­ter­pret­ed as weak­ness or, worse, com­plic­i­ty.

By fail­ing to re­spond, Beck­les ought to be aware that she is al­low­ing a nar­ra­tive of in­de­ci­sion to take root, risk­ing a sig­nal to the elec­torate that the par­ty is un­pre­pared for the rigours of gov­er­nance if called up­on at the ap­point­ed time.

A “gov­ern­ment in wait­ing” can­not af­ford to be seen dither­ing when its own ranks ap­pear com­pro­mised.

The PNM has his­tor­i­cal­ly prid­ed it­self on be­ing the par­ty of dis­ci­pline, tol­er­ance and in­sti­tu­tion­al in­tegri­ty.

Late for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning held a well-known mantra that “the PNM is judged at a high­er stan­dard be­cause the par­ty holds it­self to a high­er stan­dard.”

These are not just words to be used dur­ing a con­ven­tion but, rather, the val­ues that must guide all PNM lead­ers when a cri­sis hits home.

The Sen­ate has now sat twice, in­clud­ing yes­ter­day, since John-Bates an­nounced in the Cham­ber that she had of­fered her res­ig­na­tion.

How­ev­er, Beck­les has made it clear that she “would not be rushed” in­to a de­ci­sion and has re­fused to pro­vide any spe­cif­ic time­frame for her de­lib­er­a­tions.

Yet every day that pass­es with­out a de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sion from her on­ly serves to erode the moral au­thor­i­ty of the Op­po­si­tion.

The time for “care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion” has end­ed.

It is time to stop the dither­ing and prove to the coun­try that the PNM is a par­ty that knows how to lead by ex­am­ple.