Along with the prayers of the Amerindi­an com­mu­ni­ty for those func­tion­ing in a Par­lia­ment con­struct­ed over a bur­ial ground of the First Peo­ples, a rig­or­ous set of rules and laws to gov­ern the be­hav­iour of those op­er­at­ing with­in its cor­ri­dors must al­so be in­sti­tut­ed.

Re­cent hap­pen­ings show the clear need for the above to mon­i­tor and bring cen­sure to gross, vul­gar and of­ten very de­lib­er­ate and de­spi­ca­ble be­hav­iours by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

It is ab­solute­ly in­suf­fi­cient for the tra­di­tion of Par­lia­ment to con­tin­ue to have the ex­clu­sive right to de­ter­mine its own rules and reg­u­la­tions to mon­i­tor and take ac­tion against such un­want­ed vi­tu­per­a­tion.

The re­al­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Par­lia­ment is that it con­tains mem­bers bi­ased to­wards their par­ties and so MPs are un­like­ly to make de­ci­sions which can pe­nalise each oth­er, notwith­stand­ing the cir­cum­stances; that’s just the na­ture of pol­i­tics.

Al­so, and with­out cast­ing as­per­sions on the present of­fice hold­er, the House Speak­er is usu­al­ly placed in the chair by the rul­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty and gov­ern­ment and, as has been the case, such an af­fil­i­a­tion is as­sumed to in­flu­ence the in­di­vid­ual’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The log­ic, there­fore, must be to place acts of in­dis­ci­pline

firm­ly out­side the reach of MPs and in­to the laws of the coun­try. Fur­ther, the codes and laws which gov­ern the be­hav­iours of MPs must car­ry se­vere penal­ties for those who vi­o­late them. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing made to va­cate a seat and hav­ing to face civ­il and crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings should be count­ed among the penal­ties.

The be­hav­iour­al pat­terns of MPs, in­clud­ing when they slan­der cit­i­zens who have no re­dress, not even in the courts, must have se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

In keep­ing with the tra­di­tion of such de­ci­sions made by Speak­ers, MP Stu­art Young yes­ter­day es­caped cen­sure af­ter apol­o­gis­ing to the House for his re­cent be­hav­iour. How­ev­er, this was not be­fore House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George be­rat­ed him for of­fen­sive com­ments he made about the Op­po­si­tion Leader and an­oth­er MP on that side of the House.

The fact is, though, that MP Young’s re­volt­ing com­ment - which we do not wish to re­peat here - is far from be­ing an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent. Such dis­plays, in­clud­ing those made in for­mal state­ments by MPs, have be­come part of the stan­dard prac­tice in Par­lia­ment.

The time is right for such laws to be passed to gov­ern the con­duct of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in the cham­bers. If codes and laws were to be passed, the de­ci­sion on will­ful guilt or in­no­cence would be de­ter­mined by mag­is­trates and judges of the courts of the coun­try right up to the Supreme Court of T&T.

The re­al­i­ty must be faced that gross dis­re­spect­ful, even crim­i­nal be­hav­iours and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed name-call­ing can­not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue, while the slight­est er­ror by an av­er­age cit­i­zen lands them in jail.

The free­dom of a small but vi­tal­ly im­por­tant group of in­di­vid­u­als, of not hav­ing to se­ri­ous­ly ac­count for dis­rep­utable be­hav­iours, is yet an­oth­er as­pect of the in­equity in the so­ci­ety. And it is one which has and con­tin­ues to cause dis­rup­tion and rea­son for dis­or­der amongst cit­i­zens with­out such pro­tec­tions.

The re­al­i­ty of this par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent is one in which an MP has gross­ly and con­spic­u­ous­ly gone be­yond be­hav­iours and lan­guage which can be ac­cept­able in the na­tion­al law-mak­ing in­sti­tu­tion and has done so with­out pun­ish­ment to match the vi­o­la­tion.