Our Raucous House?

Canadians are tut-tutting the state of shrilly verbal partisanship in their Parliament. We bemoan the fact that verbal shafts and virtual insults are bandied back and forth in the House of Commons, between the Conservative government Members of Parliament and the opposition members of the House. How undignified, how unworthy, how juvenile and absurd. High School students in the visitors' gallery are appalled.

And then there is South Korea's National Assembly, the country's seat of government. Where members of the Grand National Party had very recently taken steps to physically barricade themselves for a vote without the nuisance of any interference from the opposition. An opposition that was determined to storm the committee room.

Things got a little out of hand. Hoping to delay a vote they didn't agree with, opposition legislators and their aides struggled their way past security guards to hammer through the closed committee room door where the ruling party was assembled for their vote, exclusive of the opposition presence. A peculiar version of democratic action, to be sure.

The opposition, having none of it, shattered glass windows, and discovered they were still blocked from entry, by a discomfitting and unmovable mountain of furniture shoved up against the entranceway. The defenders of their right to vote unmolested by the inconvenient presence of the opposition, attacked through the shattered door with fire extinguishers.

Actually, someone from among the opposition legislators had had the presence of mind to bring along not only hammers which others had brought along, but a chainsaw. The better to penetrate through the stubborn door, allowing entry to the furious locked-outs. Lawsuits over resulting assaults are pending.

On another occasion, the opposition found themselves facing 200 armed security officers storming the human blockade they had formed as minority politicians insisting on entry into the rotunda of the assembly building. In the melee dozens of outraged parliamentarians were injured and then hospitalized.

In Taiwan, legislators' battles in their hallowed halls of governance have been marked by wrestling, throwing of shoes, pulling of ties, and tossing of microphones, lunch boxes and books. At one point a politician decided instead of eating crow, to chew up and swallow the draft of newly-introduced legislation he took a disliking to.

The umbrage and partisan catcalls and insults flung about in Canada's sober House of Commons during Question Period are indeed a matter of public concern. As was the recent attempt by the three opposition parties to sideline the democratic process as it is practised in Canada, by attempting to usurp the authority of the duly elected government.

Politics are like that everywhere I guess; the passions of the day drive otherwise sane people to distraction, to temporarily lose sight of the reason they've been elected - to best serve the interests of their constituents, of the population of the country, not to hoist their rigid political ideologies upon the populace.

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper exercised a bit of juvenile partisanship that came back to slap him in the face. Sometimes even the most experienced, intelligent and fundamentally decent people need to have their egos brought back to reality. It's hoped he's learned his lesson, and will exercise mature restraint in future.

As for the South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, he is blushing "with shame" at the absurd antics of his colleagues. "It was as if the hammer that smashed down the conference room door also pounded the democracy of Korea, as well as my head and heart" he said.

Doubtless. One must, perforce, have some compassion for these sober-minded yet childishly fallible people whom we elect to represent our best interests. Sigh.