President Paula-Mae Weekes spared no punches as she zoned in on the behaviour of parliamentarians during yesterday’s ceremonial start to the third session of the 12th Parliament.
Taking the words of Robert Louis Stevenson in his reference to the British Parliament, she noted, “We all know what Parliament is and we are all ashamed of it.”
The President reminded parliamentarians of the oath they took to serve “without fear or favour,” cautioning that they are the “vanguards” of democracy and people expect them to put aside selfish agendas. She noted, however, that none of this can be achieved “if the starting point is ugly politics.”
On numerous occasions, this newspaper has used this space to express concern about the petty name calling, name shaming, walkouts, lack of respect that parliamentarians display and lack of debating in the national interest, where each side, PNM and UNC, tend to behave as though they are on political platforms.
We share the President’s view that Trinidad and Tobago expects and deserves a lot better. Indeed, now is the time for good citizens to come together and stand up in the interest of the country. Narrow political views are meaningless and only serve to encourage citizens to treat each other with the very same hate and disrespect displayed by our parliamentarians.
We hope the parliamentarians not only heard the President but truly listened, digested and recommitted themselves to do better in the interest of the citizens during the new session.
We note that Her Excellency, not for the first time, had to caution individuals who should be role models but instead have set the worst examples for the people who elected them, and even worse, children perhaps aspiring to hold such offices in future.
Let us hope that the parliamentarians now fully understand the awesome responsibility they have to play in nation-building and if they don’t, that the population will stand up and let them know that no matter which side of the political divide they stand on, when they gather in the Parliament, all 41 of them form the government and must work in the national interest.
As Her Excellency reminded, while they play politics, it is the people who are suffering fallout from an economy still yet to recover from two years of COVID-19 lockdown, a spiralling crime rate, rampant child abuse and many other ills, including a road network that has been allowed to deteriorate.
Yet, in a response soon after the President’s speech, both Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, by their refusal to accept responsibility for how the dignity of the House and their roles as leaders have been eroded, failed to give us any hope of a better outcome.
Yet for all their apparent bravado, yesterday was a defining moment for T&T and we hope those to whom the message was delivered truly received it and understood what is required. As such, the population waits for when the real debates begin to see whether the Parliament will return to a house of disrespect and mauvais langue, or there will be a new dawn to give citizens a sense of hope.
