LOOKING THE WRONG WAY?

President of the Senate, Dr Linda Baboolal, may have placed emphasis, however unintentionally, on the wrong issue when, on Tuesday, at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) Regional Conference she sought to chide the media for reporting the bad behaviour of some Members of Parliament. She should have used the forum to express concern at the ill-advised conduct of a few of the country’s MPs.
 
The media gives fairly wide coverage to issues discussed in both Houses of Parliament — the Senate and the House of Representatives. But it has a duty to let the country know how MPs behave, what with some repeatedly acting in defiance of instructions from the Chair, whether in the Upper or Lower House. Senator Robin Montano, for example, has on occasion refused to obey immediately Senate President Dr Baboolal’s orders and his bad behaviour has stood out all too often in his clear attempts to play to the gallery and attract attention to himself whether or not he is talking nonsense. Indeed several other Parliamentarians are supposed to be exemplars, high profiled persons in the community, to whom the rest of the country, young and old, high and low  should be entitled as of right to look for guidance.
 
We wish to stress that Dr Baboolal has acted with restraint on a number of occasions in much the same way that Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Barendra Sinanan, has acted. We have reported what we have seen in the hope that bringing the ill-advised behaviour of members to the attention of the wider public would cause a change in their attitude. In the process we have held and continue to hold that the public must see them the way they misbehave. Meanwhile, in an attempt to remedy what she has described as the sometimes strained relationship between the media and Parliament, Dr Baboolal has advanced the idea of training for reporters covering Parliament, insisting that at times there have been inaccurate newspaper reports with respect to rulings made by either the Senate President or the Speaker of the House.
 
We know we are not infallible but we confess to not having been aware prior to Tuesday’s announcement by Dr Baboolal that such a concern existed. It is unfortunate that Dr Baboolal’s concerns had not been drawn to our attention so that any needed corrections could be made. We were glad to see, however, that the opinion expressed at the conference by the delegate of the Turks and Caicos islands was immediately shot down by Dr Baboolal.  He suggested that all reports of parliamentary proceedings should be submitted to the presiding officers before they were published.  Perish the thought!