THE atmosphere was tense, the air anticipatory, as members of the House of Representatives hunkered down Tuesday to hear Prime Minister PJ Patterson’s plan on the way forward for the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ.

Patterson’s presentation brought attacks from all corners of the Opposition benches; they tried, amid expressions of exasperation from the government members, to find a weak point to strike.

But the PM was not to be moved.

Before Patterson made his statement, there was an air of anticipation among the members, prompting comments from Speaker Michael Peart and Minister of National Security Peter Phillips, who joked that it was good that they were lively, given that amendments to the Coroner’s Act was the next item on the agenda.

As Patterson rose for his presentation, government member Maxine Henry-Wilson tapped her colleague Dean Peart on the arm as he was busy shouting something to a member on the other side of the house.

The opposition members were, for the most part, still.

The PM’s tone, while unapologetic, was not pompous. At the end of his statement, Leader of the Opposition Dr Ken Baugh, whose cellphone went off during the presentation, said it was clear that the Prime Minister’s address was conciliatory.

Baugh started the long line of repetitive questioning that was to come from the Opposition members, querying the route government planned to take for widest participation in the process of implementing the Court.

To this the PM responded that any referendum seeking a two-thirds majority was doomed to fail.

At this an opposition member interjected, “you can forget it”, throwing back at Patterson comments he made when he said that a referendum on the CCJ was out of the question.

The PM, adding a touch of humour, repeated the phrase and the House burst into laughter. That was the first of many light moments in a debate that, though it followed the usual tit-for-tat pattern, was generally a relaxed discussion.

The questions of two persistent members of the Opposition, Clive Mullings and Karl Samuda, suffered frequent interjections from the government side suggesting that they were uninformed and needed to listen and do more research.

At one point Patterson was seen banging his head against the back of his chair.

While he was responding to a question posed by one of those members, a member of the gallery shouted out “bogus Prime Minister”, and commented that the Prime Minister was unintelligent and talking nonsense.

She was undeterred even when officers threatened to eject her, but calmed down after Speaker Peart interjected.

Throughout it all, students from the Team Work and Montego Bay High schools in the gallery, who at the beginning were fidgeting with excitement, were now bored. The man in the gallery who was constantly blowing his nose throughout, was, for them, more engaging.

A few students had even dosed off and one member of the Team Work group, who was not a student, was glued to a Hardy Boys book she was reading, in much the same way that government member Portia Simpson Miller was, for the most part, engrossed in a Ministry of Health report.

Before the debate on the CCJ had ended, the Team Work group had left. Shortly after the debate ended, there was an exodus of parliamentarians and spectators from the gallery.

MoBay High sauntered out as finance minister Dr Omar Davies rose to discuss amendments to the Bank of Jamaica Act.