Now that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has rung the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion bell for De­cem­ber 2, it would seem that the sil­ly sea­son is well and tru­ly on, not on­ly out­side, but in­side Par­lia­ment. How else could one ex­plain the dis­trub­ing be­hav­iour of some Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment dur­ing last week’s ses­sions of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.

Ap­par­ent­ly throw­ing House eti­quette com­plete­ly out the door, mem­bers en­gaged in some of the most vile at­tacks against each oth­er dur­ing the ses­sions, giv­ing House Speak­er Bridgid An­nis­sette George a tor­rid time con­trol­ling the ac­tiv­i­ty’s deco­rum.

Fri­day’s ses­sion, in which the op­er­a­tions of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s min­istry were un­der scruti­ny, was par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing. As Young came un­der fire from the Op­po­si­tion, he, and in turn some of his Gov­ern­ment col­leagues seek­ing to de­fend him, con­tributed to sig­nif­i­cant and un­necce­sary cross talk.

In all the ban­ter, it would have be­come very hard for even the best of lis­ten­ers to ac­tu­al­ly get what was the crux of the mat­ter be­ing dealt with on some oc­cai­sions. In fact, we dare say that on­ly the dis­ci­plined mem­bers of John Pub­lic would have sat through to lis­ten to these ses­sions in their en­tire­ty af­ter wit­ness­ing some of them de­scend­ing in­to chaos at times.

Added to this, the re­sponse to Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath which was clear­ly un­called for from the gov­ern­ment bench, forced the Speak­er to sus­pend the ses­sion was an­oth­er ex­am­ple of be­hav­iour that we would con­demn.

In this re­gard, this news­pa­per hopes a cou­ple things will now hap­pen.

Clear­ly, the House Speak­er needs to re­vist how she han­dles such ac­tiv­i­ty. It ap­pears she cur­rent­ly leans to­wards not us­ing as strong an ap­proach to dis­ci­plin­ing mem­bers in these ses­sions as she can in reg­u­lar House sit­tings. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, MPs may have tak­en ad­van­tage of this ap­proach.

The pur­pose of the ex­er­cise af­ter all is so that the heads of the var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment min­istries can give a prop­er ac­count of what they plan for their 2020 Bud­get dis­burse­ments in the con­text of what they achieved dur­ing the pre­vi­ous year. What in fact of­ten tran­spired, how­ev­er, were MPs on ei­ther side seek­ing to score po­lit­i­cal points by in­sult­ing one an­oth­er, of­ten­times dis­rupt­ing what the pre­sen­ter was say­ing to the detri­ment of their over­all full and prop­er de­liv­ery - mean­ing John Pub­lic may have been de­nied of get­ting the sub­stance of the pre­sen­ta­tions.

As such, we sin­cere­ly hope that the MPs re­mem­ber that their over­all ac­count­abil­i­ty is to their con­stituents, who ex­pect re­al an­swers to re­al is­sues and a true ac­count of their stew­ard­ship dur­ing such ses­sions.

What oc­curred last week is yet an­oth­er black eye on the de­port­ment of MPs in the cur­rent House. This news­pa­per hopes that with the gen­er­al elec­tions to fol­low Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, they do not regress fur­ther. The pub­lic de­serves a lot bet­ter than what they wit­nessed last week.