Immediately after her reinstatement as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs Juliet Holness said the obvious: With elections now over, Members of Parliament should work together for the benefit of the Jamaican people.

Yet, circumstances surrounding her very reappointment reminded everyone that good intentions are much easier spoken about than implemented.

Long-running convention had been that nomination for the Speaker would be seconded by an Opposition member.

In this case, it wasn’t.

That’s following expressed objection by the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) to Mrs Holness as Speaker.

On the eve of the swearing-in ceremony, the PNP made it known that it would oppose reappointment of not only Mrs Holness (who is the prime minister’s wife), but also her predecessor Mrs Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert.

The PNP based its objection on what it suggested was the flawed manner in which House business had been conducted in recent years.

That, the Opposition party said, included “obfuscation and inordinate delays in the tabling of critical reports to Parliament from the Auditor General and the Integrity Commission under the leadership of successive speakers, despite advice from the Auditor General’s Chambers to the contrary”.

The ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) took strong objection to the PNP’s position, saying it smacked of “misogyny and arrogance”.

The JLP insisted that it would not be dictated to “concerning the positioning of two very capable women who were recently re-elected by the people with large majorities in their respective constituencies”.

At the risk of seeming naïve, we hope that the obvious warmth with which several opposing legislators greeted each other after being individually sworn suggests a willingness to be flexible and to give and take going forward.

And, as Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness and Opposition Leader Mark Golding indicated to the new Parliament and the nation, there is much to be done, and cross-party consultation and consensus will be badly needed on important issues.

For, as Dr Holness observed, “cooperation is not weakness, but wisdom…”

Importantly, both Dr Holness and Mr Golding spoke of the need for greater attention to ensuring Jamaicans benefit from their tremendous sacrifices over the last 12 years or so, which led to stabilisation of what had been a basket-case economy.

Dr Holness alerted the Parliament to the need for “balance” between fiscal management, addressing the social and welfare needs of the most vulnerable, as well as the long-awaited generation of sustained and meaningful economic growth.

As the prime minister said, reducing poverty and improving the socio-economic conditions of people at the base are critical to achieving even more — than the impressive numbers just recently — in the pursuit of a low-crime society.

And, there is the urgent issue of constitutional reform, which has been stymied by disagreement between the political parties over Jamaica’s final court. That’s something, we suspect, that will only be resolved by give and take.

Regarding give and take, we believe Dr Holness would do well to positively consider Mr Golding’s suggestion of reverting to the system first implemented by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding in 2007 to have parliamentary committees chaired by Opposition members.

Give and take apart, in this newspaper’s view, that system worked well in the interest of improved accountability, even efficiency.