![[Paul Lismore] The death of democracy when an unelected speaker acts, thinks and behaves like the 45th member of government.](https://www.zinfos-moris.com/photo/art/grande/47122149-37399255.jpg?v=1591887210 "[Paul Lismore] The death of democracy when an unelected speaker acts, thinks and behaves like the 45th member of government.")
![[Paul Lismore] The death of democracy when an unelected speaker acts, thinks and behaves like the 45th member of government.](https://www.zinfos-moris.com/photo/art/default/47122149-37399255.jpg?v=1591887212 "[Paul Lismore] The death of democracy when an unelected speaker acts, thinks and behaves like the 45th member of government.")
We saw the first death throes of our National Assembly when Maya Hanoomanjee developed acute hearing and sight problems with her left side and kept picking on anything that moved towards her left.
" I order you out" became as monotonously frequent as her apparent desire to eat an Esko biscuit, generously provided by a daughter making a fortune packaging cheap biscuits as de luxe ones and selling them at a huge price to gullible tourists at our Duty Free shop.
But at least, Maya had a certain charm and elegance, and was not as monstrously biased and one eyed as the current incumbent.
What do we have now? A Speaker with a highly dubious past and who, despite serving as our ambassador in the USA, still speaks English like a sixieme fail trying to impress the teacher that repetitive yelling of the same badly pronounced nonsense will somehow upgrade his marks.
In his weird world, "repeat" becomes "lipit", and someone who was not elected often tells long standing members of Parliament that it "is in the Standing orders!"... as if those experienced members of parliament had never heard of these orders that are as old and antiquated as many of those 'serviteurs du pays" who have been recycled into new posts in order to add a hefty sum of money to their already over generous pensions.
When Maya used to tell a member of the opposition (always the opposition, except on one occasion for someone from the government side...), "I order you out", everyone knew what she meant. Many of us may not have liked it, but at least we all knew what the order meant.
This bellicose Speaker has decided that " I ask you to withdraw!", screamed at 90 decibels, sounds a lot better. Does he think that his target is having a bit of jig jig in the National Assembly and therefore the papal doctrine of coitus interruptus dictates that he must be ordered to withdraw? Perhaps he thinks he is the envoy of the Pope....
Or he probably thinks he is a Bollywood villain, as he seems to have perfected the quite ludicrous way he stands up, walks towards his target, huge stomach looming over his victim, and screams, " I ask you to withdraw!"
Does he see himself as Gabbar Singh from the film Sholay?
I keep expecting him to follow on from his "Withdraw " nonsense with " Kitne Aadmi the?", rubbing some betel leaves in his hands before shoving them in his mouth, drawing his revolver, and starts playing Russian roulette with the members of the opposition, whilst laughing like a maniac. This terrible scenario is unfortunately what we have come to expect from this so called Speaker.
Some people have generously called him the 'goalkeeper' for the government, i.e. the one who saves all the shots that the opposition legitimately fires at the government. It is worse than that, I am afraid. He is now the murderer of all democratic debates in the National Assembly, and his constant barking at the opposition leads any reasonable person to conclude that this is no independent, objective speaker at all, but the 45th member of the Government whose primary role seems to be to act as a bullet proof vest protecting everyone on his left side.
You only have to look at the way all previous Speakers, whether from the PTr, the MMM, or the MSM have handled the responsibilities of the Speaker's role and responsibilities to know that the rot has really set in, and that the National Assembly has now become an unofficial branch of the Sun Trust/la cuisine.
Sir Harilal Vaghjee is of course the God of them all with his intimate knowledge of all the intricacies of the National Assembly and whose calm demeanour and respect for ALL the members stand in stark contrast to the fat buffoon currently undertaking that role. Sir Ramesh Jeewoolall, Ajay Daby, Iswardeo Seetaram, Premnath Ramnah, Kailash Purryag, Razack Peeroo, even Alan Ganoo stand head and shoulders above the screaming lump of fat and gristle currently murdering our democracy. Maya was bad, but she was a million times better than this hoodlum masquerading as a Speaker.
The time will come when I fear a member of the opposition, out of sheer frustration, will hurl something at the thing sitting in the Speaker's chair. I, for one, hope that his aim is true....
This week, he stopped Arvind Boolell from asking a perfectly proper PNQ to the Minister of Finance and, worse, he gave no explanations whatsoever for his latest display of authoritarianism. Today, in the midst of a huge scandal involving commissions by the hundreds of millions, he did his worst to stop Arvind Boolell from asking perfectly legitimate questions on the scandal.
You get the impression that he does this deliberately in order to disrupt the flow of thought on the opposition side ,and to relieve the pressure on the Prime Minister, so that the latter has the extra time he needs in order to formulate another bullshitting reply that evades the question.
Is this what our democracy has been reduced to? Where an unelected individual has the power to stop people representing our votes from carrying out their legitimate function of holding the government to account? Where that individual can suspend Parliament on a whim, esp during the times when his own boorish and bully boy behaviour is responsible for many of the upheavals in the National Assembly? Is this the democracy that our parents and grandparents fought, and many died, for?
If Pravind Jugnauth had any political sense, he would immediately sack Ivan Collensipakiloo as his DPM and any member of the Board of CEB during 2018-2020.
Not doing so now, but doing it at a later stage when the evidence will come out, will smack of poor leadership for someone who keeps telling us that he is 'absolutely committed' to fighting corruption. What is he worried about? That the buffoon Rawoo would resign in sympathy with his ML leader? Eoula! Ever known any lottery jackpot winner to burn his winning lottery ticket?
By sacking those sad individuals, Pravind Jugnauth will give a clear message that he means what he says when he tells us he will fight corruption. It will also send a clear message to the speaker that his 'help' in stymying the opposition attempts to question him and his government is unwarranted and a denial of democracy.
But if he prevaricates and does nothing, then I hope he knows what a toothache is. The pain will continue until the rotten tooth is removed. And as of now, Ivan is the rotten tooth in this government and needs to be extracted fast. Whether the Speaker likes it or not. In any case, the fat, screaming banshee was never voted by us to have any say into how our parliamentary democracy functions.
It is time the Prime Minister tells him this in no uncertain terms, because the way things are, an unelected buffoon has really hijacked our democracy. And this cannot be right for all right thinking people who still believe that for all its faults, our parliamentary democracy is not that bad....until an oaf of a Speaker decided that he owns the whole of the National Assembly and that those voted by us have to obey his idiocies...or "withdraw!"
" I order you out" became as monotonously frequent as her apparent desire to eat an Esko biscuit, generously provided by a daughter making a fortune packaging cheap biscuits as de luxe ones and selling them at a huge price to gullible tourists at our Duty Free shop.
But at least, Maya had a certain charm and elegance, and was not as monstrously biased and one eyed as the current incumbent.
What do we have now? A Speaker with a highly dubious past and who, despite serving as our ambassador in the USA, still speaks English like a sixieme fail trying to impress the teacher that repetitive yelling of the same badly pronounced nonsense will somehow upgrade his marks.
In his weird world, "repeat" becomes "lipit", and someone who was not elected often tells long standing members of Parliament that it "is in the Standing orders!"... as if those experienced members of parliament had never heard of these orders that are as old and antiquated as many of those 'serviteurs du pays" who have been recycled into new posts in order to add a hefty sum of money to their already over generous pensions.
When Maya used to tell a member of the opposition (always the opposition, except on one occasion for someone from the government side...), "I order you out", everyone knew what she meant. Many of us may not have liked it, but at least we all knew what the order meant.
This bellicose Speaker has decided that " I ask you to withdraw!", screamed at 90 decibels, sounds a lot better. Does he think that his target is having a bit of jig jig in the National Assembly and therefore the papal doctrine of coitus interruptus dictates that he must be ordered to withdraw? Perhaps he thinks he is the envoy of the Pope....
Or he probably thinks he is a Bollywood villain, as he seems to have perfected the quite ludicrous way he stands up, walks towards his target, huge stomach looming over his victim, and screams, " I ask you to withdraw!"
Does he see himself as Gabbar Singh from the film Sholay?
I keep expecting him to follow on from his "Withdraw " nonsense with " Kitne Aadmi the?", rubbing some betel leaves in his hands before shoving them in his mouth, drawing his revolver, and starts playing Russian roulette with the members of the opposition, whilst laughing like a maniac. This terrible scenario is unfortunately what we have come to expect from this so called Speaker.
Some people have generously called him the 'goalkeeper' for the government, i.e. the one who saves all the shots that the opposition legitimately fires at the government. It is worse than that, I am afraid. He is now the murderer of all democratic debates in the National Assembly, and his constant barking at the opposition leads any reasonable person to conclude that this is no independent, objective speaker at all, but the 45th member of the Government whose primary role seems to be to act as a bullet proof vest protecting everyone on his left side.
You only have to look at the way all previous Speakers, whether from the PTr, the MMM, or the MSM have handled the responsibilities of the Speaker's role and responsibilities to know that the rot has really set in, and that the National Assembly has now become an unofficial branch of the Sun Trust/la cuisine.
Sir Harilal Vaghjee is of course the God of them all with his intimate knowledge of all the intricacies of the National Assembly and whose calm demeanour and respect for ALL the members stand in stark contrast to the fat buffoon currently undertaking that role. Sir Ramesh Jeewoolall, Ajay Daby, Iswardeo Seetaram, Premnath Ramnah, Kailash Purryag, Razack Peeroo, even Alan Ganoo stand head and shoulders above the screaming lump of fat and gristle currently murdering our democracy. Maya was bad, but she was a million times better than this hoodlum masquerading as a Speaker.
The time will come when I fear a member of the opposition, out of sheer frustration, will hurl something at the thing sitting in the Speaker's chair. I, for one, hope that his aim is true....
This week, he stopped Arvind Boolell from asking a perfectly proper PNQ to the Minister of Finance and, worse, he gave no explanations whatsoever for his latest display of authoritarianism. Today, in the midst of a huge scandal involving commissions by the hundreds of millions, he did his worst to stop Arvind Boolell from asking perfectly legitimate questions on the scandal.
You get the impression that he does this deliberately in order to disrupt the flow of thought on the opposition side ,and to relieve the pressure on the Prime Minister, so that the latter has the extra time he needs in order to formulate another bullshitting reply that evades the question.
Is this what our democracy has been reduced to? Where an unelected individual has the power to stop people representing our votes from carrying out their legitimate function of holding the government to account? Where that individual can suspend Parliament on a whim, esp during the times when his own boorish and bully boy behaviour is responsible for many of the upheavals in the National Assembly? Is this the democracy that our parents and grandparents fought, and many died, for?
If Pravind Jugnauth had any political sense, he would immediately sack Ivan Collensipakiloo as his DPM and any member of the Board of CEB during 2018-2020.
Not doing so now, but doing it at a later stage when the evidence will come out, will smack of poor leadership for someone who keeps telling us that he is 'absolutely committed' to fighting corruption. What is he worried about? That the buffoon Rawoo would resign in sympathy with his ML leader? Eoula! Ever known any lottery jackpot winner to burn his winning lottery ticket?
By sacking those sad individuals, Pravind Jugnauth will give a clear message that he means what he says when he tells us he will fight corruption. It will also send a clear message to the speaker that his 'help' in stymying the opposition attempts to question him and his government is unwarranted and a denial of democracy.
But if he prevaricates and does nothing, then I hope he knows what a toothache is. The pain will continue until the rotten tooth is removed. And as of now, Ivan is the rotten tooth in this government and needs to be extracted fast. Whether the Speaker likes it or not. In any case, the fat, screaming banshee was never voted by us to have any say into how our parliamentary democracy functions.
It is time the Prime Minister tells him this in no uncertain terms, because the way things are, an unelected buffoon has really hijacked our democracy. And this cannot be right for all right thinking people who still believe that for all its faults, our parliamentary democracy is not that bad....until an oaf of a Speaker decided that he owns the whole of the National Assembly and that those voted by us have to obey his idiocies...or "withdraw!"
