Members of the National Assembly should exercise civility towards their peers

Jan 15, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- The following column was published two years ago in response to the same controversy that is now being resurrected:

There is a certain person in the government who can be caustic criticizing members of the Opposition. On her Facebook page, she has been known to use strong adjectives and nouns to describe certain Opposition parliamentarians. If those words were used in the National Assembly, they would have to be withdrawn as constituting unparliamentary language.

What Members of Parliament say in the National Assembly is privileged. They cannot be sued over their pronouncements. They can take certain liberties without fear of a libel action. But parliamentarians are expected to be polite and civil when addressing each other.

The things that particular person wrote on her Facebook page, against another honourable member, would not have been entertained in the National Assembly because the use of such words would have been deemed by the Speaker as unparliamentary. It is therefore ironic that the particular member could say certain things in Facebook which cannot be said in the National Assembly.

In order to ensure greater civility within the Lok Sabha, India’s parliament, a list of additional unparliamentary words is compiled periodically. Among the new list of words are “baloney”, “betrayal”, “cheat”, “cockroaches”, “coward”, “criminal”, “disgrace”, “hogwash”, “hypocrite”, “liar”, “fool” and “corruption”.

The publication of the list of unparliamentary words came under severe criticism in India. Some persons viewed it as an attempt to gag members of parliament and an affront to freedom of expression and privileged speech in the parliament.

It was later explained that the words in question were not banned but merely represented a list of words which in the past had to be scrubbed from the public record of the proceedings of the Lok Sabha. It was further explained that the rules of India’s parliament permit the expunging of words which do not conform to the dignity befitting the National Assembly.

The issue of unparliamentary language has arisen recently in Guyana’s National Assembly. And rather than claiming that the words are proscribed from being used, it would be much better if it is clarified that the list of unparliamentary words are merely there to guide parliamentarians during their presentations in the House.

A distinction needs to be made. It would be unparliamentary for certain words to be directed against certain members. For example, it would not be befitting the decorum expected in the House for any member to be described of accused of being a “cheat” or “corrupt”.

The Standing Orders of the National Assembly is to the effect that, “It shall be out of order to use offensive and insulting language about members of the National Assembly”.

In order to ensure greater civility within the National Assembly, the Standing Orders require that Members be addressed with the word. “Comrade” appearing before their title or official designation or they be referred to as “Honourable Mr. or Ms…”

And it goes further to state that no Member of the National Assembly shall impute improper motives to any other Member of the National Assembly. As such, no Member should describe another as “corrupt” or a “fool”. But certainly, the former should be allowed to describe a government, past of present.

If the word ‘corrupt’ is proscribed from being used in the House to characterize the actions of a government, it would make it impossible for a no-confidence motion to be debated since this is often the basis for tabling a confidence motion in the House. Indeed, during the debate of the no-confidence motion against the APNU+AFC regime, the word “corruption” and its derivatives were used no less than 44 times.

The context in which certain words are used needs to be taken into consideration. If certain words are used to disparage a member of the Assembly, they should be expunged and withdrawn, at the direction of the Speaker. But greater latitude needs to be shown when these words are used to describe the government, either past or present.

It is easy to cast aspersions on the integrity of the Speaker. But those who feel that something was said that ought to be expunged from the record and withdrawn, need to be reminded that they have a right to raise objections, on a point of order, to the use of unparliamentary language. This has been done before and those guilty have been asked to withdraw their remarks and for any offending remarks to be scrubbed from the public record.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

(Members of the National Assembly should exercise civility towards their peers)

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• Facebook page, National Assembly, parliamentarians, Peeping Tom, unparliamentary words

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