DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH

Though I realise that many people are steupsing at Friday’s scandalous turn of events in the parliamentary Chamber, I must confess that I, on the other hand, am permitting myself a politically incorrect and irreverent guffaw or two. My first cheeky chuckle is reserved for the Marshall of the House, Gilbert Hamilton, a man I call Grim Gilbert because he portrays himself as the most austere guardian of the House rules this modern Parliament has ever seen. I remember incurring his wrath last November for the tiniest of  “transgressions”: standing on the Red House balcony that overlooks the People’s Parliament, Woodford Square, and being so engrossed in the goings and comings in the Square beneath, that I didn’t realise the President of the Senate Dr Linda Baboolal was returning to the Chamber.

She was led by Mr Grim, who Mace in hand and strutting his sentinel strut up the corridor regarded me, now pressed against the balcony rail, with the meanest of scowls, as if I were some sort of stupid, annoying insect, one that he would have enjoyed squashing. An apology from me for unwittingly breaching protocol did nothing to soften his rigid facial muscles. Indeed, my quietly stated, “I’m sorry,” earned me one of the most contemptuous looks I’ve ever received. So when I see this same stiff scowling Marshall afraid to eject UNC MP Chandresh Sharma, I figure I’m permitted a laugh. Grim Gilbert has confirmed what I suspected about him: he’s more show than substance and just one more of the many Trinis who use their authority only on lesser mortals. Said plainly, he enjoys flexing his muscles for the little people in the House, like the journalists and the visitors in the public gallery.

However, he becomes a dull, small, paralysed axe in front of the big trees when these are committing the most severe breaches and he forgets that his main role is to enforce the Speaker’s directives relating to order and decorum on the floor of the Chamber. My second snigger is for the policemen of the Chamber. Five policemen standing around Sharma, one of them even grinning, but not a man jack brave enough to do as ordered and remove the MP. Yet you should see them on other occasions. Again, like Grim Gilbert, these congressional sentries never hesitate to chastise the press and public, to threaten to put us and them out for not following the merest of House rules. The small man is an easy target for the police. But they get an order from the Speaker to remove an MP for gross disrespect and misconduct and they are transformed from men into mice before the hollow threats of lawsuits from other UNC MPs. And we wonder why crime is on the rise?

Friday should make us wonder no more. The answer is clear. If a group of policemen can’t handle a fly by night, two by four MP, then how can they handle the bad boys with the guns? How the criminals must be amused and how they must be saying, “One law for the powerful, another for the lowly in this land.” My third guffaw is directed toward the UNC. I want to see the Opposition get up now and talk about the need for law and order in this country after Chandresh Sharma ignored the pleas from the Marshall and policemen to leave the Chamber. The UNC will try to argue that the MP didn’t behave out of order, that he acted in defence of his rights, but the truth is that Sharma only acted in defiance of the Speaker in another carefully orchestrated scene of this ridiculous teacup saga which has served no other purpose than to bring the UNC and Sharma into disrepute.

Sharma was asked to apologise to the House on Friday or face suspension. Instead, he tried to read a letter that was a condemnation of the PNM. He knew well that he would be stopped and suspended. He even dared the Speaker to allow him to read the letter or “do what you want.”  Now, I suppose we’ll have to hear for months how unfair the PNM is, how biased the Speaker is and how the Government is using its majority to silence the Opposition, to oust its MPs. A teacup weary public will have to endure months more of an affair that they do not consider their  cup of tea and this when their only interest is that the country’s murder toll is soon going to surpass the number of calendar days. I’m also permitting myself a giggle at the UNC because in one of life’s great ironies, the man with whom Sharma clashed in the tearoom last year, the man who was the catalyst for Sharma’s indefinite suspension Friday is the very man the UNC ejected from the House on May 25, 2001, Dr Keith Rowley.

Do you not remember? Rowley had accused then AG, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj of knowing the airport contract was null and void but yet “pole-vaulting on principle” after Maharaj stayed in the Cabinet and “allowed them to carry on and rape the Treasury.” The AG didn’t react at all. He smiled as Rowley spoke. Speaker Rupert Griffith however, was not pleased, particularly as his role was to protect Basdeo Panday and any attack on the Piarco Project. Griffith immediately asked Rowley to withdraw his “unparliamentary language.” Rowley denied his language was unparliamentary or insulting to anyone and so Griffith instructed the PNM MP to discontinue his contribution. Rowley continued to argue and the Speaker ordered him to leave the Chamber under Standing Order 43 (3), which permits the Speaker to direct any Member to withdraw immediately from the House for the remainder of the day’s sitting.

Rowley refused and the Speaker asked the AG to move a motion to suspend Rowley. The motion was forthwith put, no seconder being required and no amendment, adjournment or debate being allowed and passed by the UNC with its majority. Rowley picked up his papers and left quietly. It was his colleagues who exited the Chamber in protest and his peer Valley who shouted “all yuh mad in this place.” Dr Rowley eventually returned to the House after peace was brokered between his leader Patrick Manning and Panday and after saccharine speeches to the House by both men on parliamentary decorum. How and when Sharma will return is anyone’s guess. As for the Marshall and policemen who failed to follow orders on Friday, their fate should be the same as Sharma’s: They should be ejected from the Chamber. And not just indefinitely, but permanently. I’m not joking. suz@itrini.com