Dea Editor,

I read with utter joy and amazement the firm move by the Speaker of the House, Delroy Chuck MP, to caution rowdy MPs in the Parliament. In the article, “Speaker cautions rowdy MPs: Final warning” in the Observer of February 10, the Speaker asserts his authority to eject those who do not have the capacity to adhere to “law and order” in the highest law-making body in the country. Someone has to assert authority here! The Speaker directed his comments to both sides of the House as he asked lawmakers to behave in a manner that is fitting for leaders of the nation. Mr Chuck, I congratulate you for the bravery to call for a new style of behaviour in the House. Some lawmakers will be remembered only for their coarse and disruptive conduct in the House. I hope that your guide will inspire a new push for a certain quality, not just in behaviour but what is expressed by members of the highest law-making body in the land.

At each sitting, more than often, school children are present in Parliament, visitors are there, and the entire country is watching the crude behaviour and the litany of diatribe by some of those who have been elected to lead. Defective leadership, Mr Speaker, has continued to breed a defective “followership”. It is time to put a lid on the “butto” and “garrisonised” dispositions of many of those elected to lead. How can we ask the “followership” to change, to be tolerant, purposeful and creative in their deliberations if leaders continue to take “campaign/platform politics” to Parliament? I wish, Mr Speaker, that you will share with them the thinking on a new calibre of leadership that will guarantee one order in the House.

Louis EA Moyston

Kingston 8