Knocking each other off?

“Car c’est en famille, ce n’est pas en public, qu’un lave son linge sale.
But it is at home and not in public that one should wash ones dirty linen.”
Napoleon – On his return from Elba. Speech to the Legislative Assembly.

I don’t usually follow politics. Being still in school, I tend to be caught up with things that directly affect me. More ‘exciting’ things like complex numbers and Quantum theory (whoop! whoop! Right.) But there was absolutely no avoiding the ‘Partial Gag’ issue splashed across the front pages of newspapers. I hadn’t even known that you could put a partial gag on someone. Is it like using scotch tape rather than duct tape?
But what really got my attention were the pictures of MP’s gesticulating into each other’s faces while screaming wantonly.  Reading enlightening quotes by the said MPs like “we will knock off each one of you, one by one…” and “bring it nuh” while presumably debating issues affecting the future of this country were also eye-openers.  I like using quotes but I confess, I’ll be hard-pressed to quote from one of our Parliamentarians given the recent quotes being published.
I mean gosh, even in school when we have our most heated debates (usually between QC students and Sixth Form new students from Bishops’ arguing over which school is better – Go QC!!), we don’t shout at each other across the room.
And we certainly don’t threaten to ‘knock off’ anyone. Of course for a QC student to threaten such a thing would be quite a feat seeing as we’re now the minority! But seriously that’s not the reason we don’t make those kinds of threats. Usually we’re so caught up trying to defend our points and desperate to get a word in edgewise it’ll be crazy to even think about wasting your precious few speaking moments threatening each other.
I mean all of these Parliamentarians probably don’t take their issues with each other out of the Parliament Building (one hopes!) but Jeez! Some of the pictures being printed in the newspapers of the ‘discussions’ going on in The National Assembly really aren’t flattering to anyone assembled there. One wonders if fisher folks wouldn’t be outraged if they were compared to those irate MP’s.
In half of the pictures, there’s at least one person who looks like they’re about to clamber over the desks and slap their opponents silly. And it’s not funny. The pictures made me laugh, but not one of those ‘ha ha’ laughs, it was more like with incredulity. I still couldn’t believe what was going on in one of the highest law-making bodies in our country.
I now appreciate the aphorism, ‘Ignorance is bliss’. I probably would’ve been better off entertaining the notion that our parliamentarians debate our country’s future in hushed, cultured voices. Especially after returning from their tea-break – sipping tea with their raised pinkies and laughing amiably while exchanging bon mots over scones!
I know it’s important to believe in what you’re saying and to get passionate about your convictions (God knows I’ve been involved in enough cricket arguments to know about that!). But it’s the way you express your views that matters. It’s ironic that the brawl apparently was over the parliamentary rules – designed to prevent brawls!
Reading the reports in the papers I was reminded of one of the Calvin and Hobbes comics I read as a kid. Calvin was doing his darndest to avoid taking a bath. He started shouting because, as he said, ‘What I can’t achieve by reason, I can achieve by volume’. At the time it made me laugh because Calvin was a little kid, and kids can pretty much get away with anything.
But our parliamentarians aren’t kids. They’re mature adults who have the power to determine the future and fate of Guyana and its people. So as a schoolchild, I would just like to say that they need to get their act together or else I might have to take a leaf out of their book and ‘knock off’ the next person who tells me that Bishops’ is better than QC.