Peeping Tom Right on Mace

Jan 03, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,
Reference is made to Peeping Tom’s explanation of the relevance of the Mace in parliament. An opposition parliamentarian attempted to remove and hide the Mace while the staff tried to protect it.
It pertains to the passage of the NRF Bill. As Peeper noted there is an opposition claim that the NRF bill was not properly passed because the mace was missing from its rostrum in parliament. Readers also seem to believe that claim. I studied comparative politics. In all of the many courses I took in political science and countless readings of legislative procedures and constitutional law while studying for the doctorate, a mace has nothing to do with legal passage of legislation. The mace refers to the authority of the Speaker. It is a symbol of power and respect to the Speaker. Whether the mace is original or a copy is immaterial to legislation.
Even if the mace is required for passage of a bill or for its presence when legislation is being debated and or passed, its absence from a proceeding does not make a legislative act unconstitutional if the mace is deliberately removed from the assembly. If the preceding were the case, then all an MP had to do to prevent legislation is to grab the mace and leave the House with it. No court would support such an act or rule against passage of a law under such circumstances and declare it unconstitutional.
When I was a clerk in the Bronx Supreme Court in the early 1980s while a university student, I was privy to a case in which the judge ruled against a petitioner who challenged passage of decision in an organisation. The petitioner frequently walked out of the organisation meeting just before voting and claimed the decisions were illegal. The judge ruled that his deliberate absence from voting and attempts to prevent a quorum through his walkouts of meetings does not void a decision made by the majority of the rest of the members in attendance. Thus, the absence of an original mace deliberately removed or the use of its duplicate during passage of a bill in an assembly does not make it unconstitutional.
Yours Truly,
Vishnu Bisram

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