Has anyone noticed how rapidly previously obscure citizens transform themselves into foremost authorities on everything once elected to parliament?
Interesting in this metamorphosis is that in many cases such individuals, despite living well into their 40s before being elected, and despite enjoying long professional careers in various fields of endeavour, had never been associated with any of the thousand debates that would have grabbed national attention during their pre-public lifetimes.
It is this lack of match practice that perhaps explains why the novices are easily exposed once they begin to step out of their comfort zones, and forget that their electoral victories are electoral victories and nothing more.
We saw this most recently in the surprisingly dismissive and unnecessarily belligerent tone that Barbados’ Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite adopted in response to what can only be viewed as a politically neutral policy suggestion, by Ralph Boyce, speaking as the lead representative of a significant section of civil society, the Men’s Educational Support Association (MESA). Boyce’s suggestion was for mandatory DNA testing for all newborns, given the significant amount of emotional and financial pain suffered by large numbers of men who have been deceptively burdened with paternal responsibility.
In mature democracies, it is hardly likely that the first official response to such a suggestion would come in the form of a dismissive, personal attack on the proposer, unless of course it had come from an opposing political platform. Instead, one would have expected to hear from health officials, psychologists, comptrollers of finance on the merits or demerits of the suggestion, and the likelihood of its implementation. Indeed, the “erroneousness” (if such be the case) of the suggestion would have been revealed in the natural course of mature debate.
Perhaps the AG was seeking political points from his female gallery. But too often in our fledgling democracies, the heady wine of fresh election clashes with the underdeveloped nature of our public discourse and allows political representatives to intervene in the only way they know: that is to treat every speech like a platform speech and to treat every alternative perspective as a politically undesirable viewpoint that has to be forcefully shot down.
No wonder that in the public mind politicians are often portrayed as “off the cuff” simpletons. Remember the “demon possession” statement? This and many others would have benefited from some technical policy advice, a brief pause, or even “no comment”.
However, the media is partly responsible for feeding the bombast of the elected. Often, at public functions, the cameras stop whirring once the “minister” has spoken, ignoring the deeper and more serious parts of the discussion.
While one agrees that elected officials play a significant role in shaping our lives, the maturing of our democracies demands proper perspective from both elected and elector.
An election is no mandate for bombast!
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs.
