What transpired in the Parliament of the land on Tuesday, March 19 of this year, with the abhorrent — and seemingly contrived — history-making mass exodus from the chamber by Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his phalanx of governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Members of Parliament (MP), was yet another singular act of dishonourable parliamentary vulgarity in a long chronicle of gross disrespect exercised against the people of Jamaica.

The exodus from the Parliament by government members on account of them finding displeasure with a particular pain point in the budget presentation of Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding that turned legitimately, if somewhat belatedly, on the inappropriateness of having the wife of the prime minister, Juliet Holness — who is an MP in her own right and whose candidacy was in receipt of the support of the parliamentary Opposition up to that point — occupying the seat of Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Gleaner, in its editorial, two days after the event on March 21, titled ‘Parliamentary petulance’ misguidedly described the occurrence as simply a display of “outrage and childish petulance”. Though this may well be true, it failed to situate the incident as a cancerous recurrence in the body politic of the country which continues to shape the distrusting style of governance and decision-making by our governors. For, lest we forget, parliamentary misconduct involving Government and Opposition is nothing new to Jamaica.

Almost 62 years since Jamaica gained its independence from Britain after 307 years as a British colony and 27 years of struggle for self-rule, dishonourable men and women — more so men — have taken over our Parliament. Today, thanks to the internet and the electronic media, our MPs in Gordon House, who enjoy the authority to govern us based on free and fair elections, can be seen and heard locally and internationally during legislative sessions barking and crowing at each other with utter disrespect in the chambers of Parliament. What is more, they act in total defiance of parliamentary decorum and the civilised political behaviour which the inheritance from Westminster (Britain) demands of its practitioners and heirs in ex-colonies like Jamaica.

In fact, it was then Speaker of the House Headley Cunningham who declared to parliamentarians as far back as July 1989: “I am ashamed of you… We are going too far in bringing this House into disrepute by our conduct.” Three-and-a-half decades on, however, it is safe to say that parliamentary incivility is still alive and well in Jamaica and has got considerably worse since then. We have none but ourselves to blame for this.

To be sure, temper, like a sense of humour, has its place in serious debate in the democratic process. But the freedom enjoyed by our MPs is based on the principled notion of the collective responsibility of Parliament for what is said and gives them the authority and licence to speak ‘in the public interest’ and not in their private interest. We elect them, in other words, to focus on the affairs of State rather than on the affairs of people.

As a society still hankering to discover a place and purpose in a globalised and technologically driven world, this ought to be of more than passing interest. This is because in our highly competitive democratic system of governance, now lurching expectantly towards cantankerous dissidence in the face of an impending general election, excessive negative political rhetoric and gross unparliamentary behaviour will have one consequence — the derailment of our politics at a time when the need for sanity, stability, and intelligence in governance is greatest.

Vulgar name-calling and the hurling of insults at each other in Parliament as a substitute for intelligent discussion of substantive policy issues by our accredited representatives and those aspiring to lead us have been the stock-in-trade of our politics for some considerable time. Truth be told, this has not only caused death and violence to hundreds of precious souls but has also given rise to a cynicism and venality that have replaced an earlier sense of hope and optimism among our founding fathers and leaders. Old habits die hard, indeed, which then-newly minted Prime Minister Holness recognised in his “new politics, new policy, new people” inaugural speech in October 2011.

Clearly, in light of what transpired on March 19 in the Parliament, it is fair to conclude that the persistent, uncontrollable boil that passes therein for debate reflects the dominant and increasingly growing trend in the society. Inflammable, unreasonable, and objectionable behaviour is the order of the day.

None of this, however, ought to excuse our political leaders from understanding that the unfinished job of crafting a just and equitable policy is still their leading responsibility. In this, tolerance, the de-coarsening of sensibility, and good manners would help considerably in the speedy attainment of this objective and needs to be on the agenda of concerns of all our parliamentarians, now and in the future.

Otherwise, this country of ours, mournfully poor, immature, and suffering from psychic confusion, will soon be unfit for human habitation. This need not happen, however, if we all insist on a civilised existence in which civility is not treated as hypocrisy and good manners are not dismissed as middle-class indulgence.

I say all of this because such boorish behaviour as we have recently witnessed in our Parliament, with the mass exodus of the prime minister and his governing parliamentary colleagues as a phenomenon of our modern-day politics, gives the impression to the electorate and our millennial generation, in particular, that insulting and abusing one’s way to Parliament or Jamaica House is the Jamaican people’s idea of democracy for development. It reveals also that a great many of our leaders do not consider the mass of the population to be the real people in the land as Norman Manley discovered in the 1930s.

For if they did, they would realise that as political leaders attempting to shape a society and build a nation out of the raw material of a chaotic existence, they are obliged to use their experience among the people as a natural basis for genuine political dialogue with them, rather than attempting to turn us all into zombies.

Is it any wonder our political system is in crisis? Is it any wonder that it is befallen by a heavy dose of solemnity, introduced by greedy souls hankering after the spoils of victory and who have not been willing to play by the rules?

And yet, sustained application of genuine humility, and the striving for excellence on the part of our leaders can, indeed, turn the crisis around. In addition, our leaders cannot continue to assume that the mass of the people are not interested in ideas, only in catchy phrases, entertainment and pulverizing cass-cass. This, in my further view, is where the habit of disrespect really began in this country by certain of us in dealing with the mass of the population.

There is no denying that our politics is crying out for redefinition against the background of the people’s desire for genuine empowerment. Our brand of political tribalism over many decades has been seen as cause, occasion, and result of the derailment, and constructive debate rather than the job of abusing political leaders not to their liking can empower our politicians and politics far more than we realise.

At the best of times, politicians are vulnerable creatures. As such, to get our politics back on track will require politicians, in and out of Parliament in the present dispensation, who decide not to exercise care in their actions and utterances to be prepared to be humbled by the electorate as others before them have been.

Everton Pryce is a former Hubert H Humphrey Fulbright fellow.