Antics And Lack Of Decorum In The People’s House Depicts Deeper Societal Rot

The abhorent shout­ing match in the Parliament on Tuesday which result­ed in a pre­ma­ture end to the sit­ting is sig­nif­i­cant and must be seen as fun­da­men­tal­ly teth­ered to the present state of law­less­ness occur­ring across the coun­try. Students attend­ing the sit­ting in the gallery report­ed­ly walked out in dis­gust at the igno­rant dis­play by the two men.
In the rather crude dis­play, it became clear that being edu­cat­ed does not always equate with smarts or class.

The shout­ing match between the PNP’s Dayton Campbell a Medical doc­tor and the JLP’s Christopher Tufton the Minister of Health who holds a Doctorate in Business Administration was cen­tered on alle­ga­tions that Tufton ordered the clo­sure of the trou­bled Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay.

Campbell argued rather pathet­i­cal­ly that the min­is­ter made the order while Tufton insist­ed that he had no such author­i­ty and could not have made the order. In fact, Tufton pulled out a cell phone from which he read a mes­sage indi­cat­ing that the Chief Medical Officer was the one who had the author­i­ty of such a clos­ing was to be contemplated.

What I found par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing is that if the Minister had infor­ma­tion which backs up his claim as he said why did­n’t Dayton Campbell sim­ply ask him to for­ward the excul­pa­to­ry mes­sage for his edification?
Shouldn’t the doc­u­ment then become part of the record of events of the day in the Parliament for pos­ter­i­ty, I mean if we aren’t run­ning a banana repub­lic that is?

What is it about the PNP whether in pow­er or out of pow­er which makes them so pow­er hun­gry, reck­less, igno­rant and degenerative?
Between Peter Phillips giv­ing mem­bers of the Government what appears to be the fin­ger, talk about lead­er­ship, Dayton Campbell’s arro­gant and con­tin­ued inter­rup­tion in the House and prob­a­bly among the most shock­ing of all in recent days, the com­ments of Member of Parliament for St Catherine East Denise Daley who declared that peo­ple ‘in green’ are either sen­tenced or chased out of her constituency.

When did the mem­ber of par­lia­ment become the own­er of the con­stituen­cy is the first ques­tion which comes to mind. However, the more press­ing issue with this über igno­ra­mus’ state­ment is the fact that it was just a few years ago when Jamaicans made the turn col­lec­tive­ly to eschew vio­lence as a polit­i­cal strategy.
Shockingly, the PNP through the col­lec­tive actions and inac­tions of its mem­ber­ship over the years, have inti­mat­ed that they still see polit­i­cal vio­lence as a means of acquir­ing and hold­ing polit­i­cal power.

It was only in 2015 that anoth­er igno­rant imbe­cile MP, Dwayne Vaz told sup­port­ers to quote: “load up di gundem,” dur­ing a ral­ly in St. James. Not to be out­done, Portia Simpson Miller the Former PM and mem­ber of par­lia­ment in 2016 told PNP dis­senters in St Ann quote: I will come back here for anoth­er meet­ing and I know who I will bring.”
A clear threat of vio­lence to par­ty sup­port­ers who weren’t falling in line behind a then-candidate.

It has become increas­ing­ly clear that the PNP, through its own actions, has made a con­scious deci­sion that it has no inten­tion of mov­ing away from the old style pol­i­tics of the past which has had his­tor­i­cal dis­as­trous con­se­quences for our country.

The cul­mi­na­tion of the day’s events in which Campbell and Daryl Vaz end­ed up in a shout­ing match only added to the dark­ness and lack of lead­er­ship the type of which nei­ther PNP nor JLP sup­port­ers should take comfort.
Sure, in oth­er nations par­lia­ments there are shout­ing match­es and in some cas­es even fisticuffs, re those the types of behav­iors we should be look­ing at emu­lat­ing, or should we be seek­ing a calmer more respect­ful type of delib­er­a­tive body in which deco­rum and respect is the norm?

If mem­bers of the two polit­i­cal par­ties do not have the com­mon decen­cy and deco­rum to con­duct them­selves appro­pri­ate­ly in the peo­ple’s house, where there are oth­er cit­i­zens, chil­dren amongst them, watch­ing how their busi­ness is being con­duct­ed, what hope does this coun­try have for a bet­ter future?
As some­one who talks ad nau­se­am about the state of crime and cor­rup­tion in our coun­try, I am dis­heart­ened at the lev­el of rot which still exists with­in the body politic.