Tedious repetition

MONDAY’S debate of the state of emergency was a lost opportunity for Government and Opposition to unite and inspire confidence in the state, amid a raging pandemic that has wrought havoc with the lives of the people of this country.

Instead of providing solace or a glimpse of a path forward, it was an intemperate, uninspiring and uninformative affair. Indeed, the sitting was a tedious repetition of what this country has come to expect of our leaders.

For every state of emergency called in this country, there has almost always been a parliamentary debate of the conditions that caused such emergency. This is because the Constitution stipulates such reasons must be delivered to House of Representatives within three days and debated as soon as practicable.

We believe the framers of our Constitution could not have intended such a procedure to be a mere rubber-stamping of the will of an executive. On the contrary, these debates serve as a basic guarantee that the population will, at the earliest opportunity, be informed of the reasons that have led to the suspension of their rights.

These debates are therefore of profound importance.

While the current state of emergency differs from previous ones, in that it was called not because of violent unrest but because of an obviously dangerous infectious disease, there are still questions about it to be asked and answered.

For this reason alone, we are disappointed with the tone and tenor of Monday’s proceedings. The exchanges between the Prime Minister and the Opposition over the Andrea Bharatt candlelight vigils were a low point.

The irony is, the vigils commemorating Ms Bharatt were one of the rare moments in this country’s recent past when the entire nation had come together: united in tears over the straw that broke the camel’s back on the issue of violence against women.

All the MPs who participated in Monday’s sitting were operating under extraordinary circumstances.

However, the debate the country got was equally extraordinary in its fractiousness and complete lack of accountability. Though Dr Rowley sought to shine a spotlight on the Opposition, the proceedings raised more questions than answers about his own Government’s management of this crisis in recent weeks.

Instead of receiving a balm, we now move into next week’s commemoration of Indian Arrival Day – a holiday that celebrates our rich diversity – nursing the wounds of a public health crisis that also doubles as a social crisis.

With time being of the essence, there were none of the usual platitudes at the end of Monday’s sitting. The only consolation – and for this nobody can take full credit except the virus itself – was the fact that the sitting was relatively short, since Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George curtailed the sitting hours to compensate for the curfew.