By Stevon Jaggasar
Through this week, every political and wannabe political commentator will be throwing their words online and in print to condemn or praise the recently implemented State of Emergency. And while there is a lot to be discussed on that front, light also needs to be shed on another incident that occurred this week that seems to have gone under the radar in the national conversation.
During a parliamentary sitting on February 27th, the House Chambers was filled with perhaps one of the most bizarre and disrespectful exchanges it has ever seen.
During an Oral Questions to the Minister segment of the sitting, several supplementary questions from opposition MP, Gadsby-Dolly were disallowed by Speaker of the House, Jagdeo Singh.
His grounds for dismissing the questions were that they were pointed, overly complex by having 7 components, and lacked any relevance whatsoever to the supplementary questions.
A shocking response then came from Gadsby-Dolly when she let out an exacerbated sigh and moan at the Speaker's dismissal. Her actions showed little to no respect for the institution of Parliament nor the Speaker of the House.
Former Minister of Education Nyan Gadsby-Dolly
It was a matter so scandalous that political novice, Marvin Gonzales, had to attempt damage control on her behalf. However, probably more bizarrely, Gonzales chose to double down on his colleague’s sentiments. He accused the Speaker of the House of lecturing and being overly condescending.
Clearly, what was on display was not just the beliefs of one PNM party member, it appears that disenfranchisement with the establishment is a party belief for them.
The dissent continued throughout the proceedings. Later in the session, further questions were dismissed regarding laptop distribution because, as Speak of the House said, those questions were of total irrelevance to the current Standing Orders.
He was sure to add that if the question must be asked, then there are mechanisms to do so properly and go through the proper processes. What the PNM bench chose to do, however, was to completely disregard the previous 60-plus years of parliamentary procedures and, in local parlance, ‘do their own ting’.
Speaker Jagdeo Singh was left with nothing else to do but to express disappointment at the PNM for being so oblivious to the Standing Orders, the very doctrine that governs parliamentary proceedings.
The current iteration of the PNM party seems to be too comfortable treating Parliament as some sort of ‘rum shop’, operating under a ‘do what you feel’ mentality. Meanwhile those very members feel so unashamedly emboldened to grab microphones and claim that we are “the laughingstock of the region”.
Former Minister of National Security Marvin Gonzales
From one perspective, the party seems to be too mired in their own hypocrisy to see the fallacy in what they are doing. From another, maybe the PNM is too fractured to even have a unified voice anymore. If the latter is the case, then that begs the question; how long can we, as a society, go on allowing a dysfunctional party to operate and occupy seats in government?
The Standing Orders are not optional guidelines to be bent when convenient, they are the backbone of parliamentary democracy.
When members choose to ignore them, they are not merely challenging a Speaker; they are challenging the very system that allows them to sit in those seats in the first place.
Even framing the Speaker’s enforcement of the rules as “condescension” or “lecturing.”
This is a dangerous narrative. It suggests that adherence to rules is somehow oppressive, that structure is synonymous with bias, and that authority must be resisted simply because it exists. That line of thinking, if allowed to take root, does not strengthen democracy, but rather, it destabilizes it.
By some definitions, Nyan Gadsby-Dolly is still a newcomer to politics. There are politicians in that House Chamber who have been in their seats before Gadsby-Dolly could drive. On the other hand, she is a former Minister of Education.
She has absolutely no defence for this level of behaviour. The exaggerated sighs and eye rolls should have stopped in childhood, decades before it was allowed into Parliament, yet here we are.
If that is the lesson being taught, then the consequences will extend far beyond a single sitting of Parliament. It will shape the tone of political discourse for years to come, normalizing a brand of politics that prioritizes noise over nuance. No one deserves this from their parliamentarians.
