Forget logic and manners, he who shouts loudest wins debates
The Tanzania parliament is getting a lot of stick from various quarters over what can only be described as a serious deficit of decorum.
Over the past fortnight or so, members of the “august House” have been heard to exchange expletives and generally behave more like a rabble than a body of representatives of the people. Some MPs sound like they badly need strong mouthwash.
To be fair, this lack of politesse has not affected all the members; on the contrary, it is a very small number of legislators that is involved in this unbecoming comportment, but as the Kiswahili adage goes, when a basket contains one fish that has gone bad, all fish in that basket are rotten.
Normally, bad behaviour is remedied by prompt sanctions meted out to the offending individuals, so as to set them apart from the majority, who have largely kept hygienic mouths. But there has been a perception out there that those who preside over parliamentary proceedings are not impartial, and that they are influenced by their political affiliations.
This has been put in relief every time an Opposition legislator is suspended from a session for making unflattering remarks about a colleague when a ruling-party representative will utter worse things with surprising impunity.
I know for sure that our political systems are not meant to be fair and just, but then a little pretence could help calm spirits and provide the requisite levels of serenity for organised debate to take place. As it is, our parliament is simply not living up to expectations.
No wonder, then, that the parliamentary secretariat has been mooting the idea of stopping the live coverage of parliament by the government’s television channel. This would probably allow for a little censorship to remove the X-rated statements of our “honourables” so that parliamentary material can be safe for our children.
The terrible state of debate in our public space has meant that the louder an individual shouts the more they feel they have won debating points. So now we see a growing number of young ignoramuses baying at each other without any concern for fact, logic or plain good manners.
It is interesting that at the same time as this is going on, a film is being sold in Dar — no doubt in the form of pirated videos — of the story of Abraham Lincoln. This movie gives an insight into the political battles Abe had to fight in protracted debates in which arguments from opposed ends were tirelessly marshalled, without descending into the poetry of the washroom.
Even when tongues get acidic, all we hear are cleverly contrived phrases that bite and ridicule without insulting, and which denote intelligence, culture and good taste.
Julius Nyerere gave his envoys a little booklet titled, “Argue, Don’t Shout” in which he counselled them to employ more brainpower than vocal chords. And, when really exasperated by a mule who is impermeable to reason, Nyerere suggested ridicule, for it takes some thought to effectively ridicule someone.
Some people I spoke to think the problem of un-parliamentary language in the House is caused by the declining standards of education, citing, for example, the fact that many examination papers our children have to sit are of the multiple-choice variety. “Just imagine,” said one colleague, “a multiple-choice graduate who finds himself in parliament and who needs to say something to justify his being a member there. What does he do?” I had no answer.
“Well,” continued my friend, “if he is smart, he will get himself some thesaurus, which has a series of synonyms for every word, and if he wants to say that so-and-so is not very intelligent, he will look under ‘S’ and find ‘stupid’ with all the other words that are synonymous with it. Then he will pick the most helpful ones; then he will make his speech.”
My, my.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]
