<B>By Pauline ETIENNE</B>

Today, MPs will be attending Parliament to – hopefully – discuss bills and maybe vote for them into Acts. We can only wish they will be more mature and responsible this week.

Last Tuesday indeed appeared as an opportunity for buffoonery. Opposition members of the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM) and the Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM) walked out of the National Assembly when the attorney general, Rama Valayden, stood up to read the “Failure to give assistance to a person in danger” Bill. They wanted to show that they disagreed with one found guilty of defamation by the Supreme Court (in a conflict opposing him to Jayen Cuttaree) and whose party activists fought with MMM activists in Rose-Hill about posters on BPML – considered as defamatory.

If Rama Valayden was found guilty by the Supreme Court, then he should be punished by the Supreme Court. There is no reason why, in this case, he should not be allowed to do his job and introduce a bill in Parliament. As for his role in the alleged “defamatory campaign” led by his activists in Rose-Hill, opposition members should use other tools than Parliament to express their anger.

Certain issues should be above party politics and debates over a bill that will affect all citizens is one of them. This is even more true as the same opposition MPs who walked out of Parliament had, a week before, asked to postpone the debate in view of the “significant importance of the bill”. But, although several opposition members had enrolled for the debates over this important bill, they all decided to boycott it for merely political reasons.

Their contention was that the prime minister should have piloted the bill. This is irrelevant because the attorney general is behind this bill and there is no reason for him not to introduce his work in Parliament. It seems opposition MPs are opposing for the sake of opposing – the more so as the opposition leader, Nando Bodha, revealed that they would all remain in Parliament even though bills were to be introduced by their pet hate. So, what was the point of all this fuss?

Yet, the opposition has shown that it can behave responsibly in some cases. The education ‘re-reform’ is an example. Even though they mentioned some flaws in the “strategy for reform – towards a quality curriculum”, its members have expressed their support for the new reform of Dharam Gokhool. Of course, they have pointed at the contradictions between his first move when he took over the ministry and the latest one but they however show patriotism by not trying to insidiously sabotage a reform that will undeniably benefit the children.

Why could not it be the same in such an important institution as the National Assembly? Opposition MPs are paid to oppose but it should not be done to the detriment of the population – whose interests they are supposed to defend. They should always bear this in mind when they step in to Parliament… Especially today!