The president must be heard

INTELLIGENT questions are surfacing about the impact of unruliness in Parliament and MPs’ misbehaviour: is this violence and disrespect shaping the conduct of the many citizens with grievances?

Scenes of shoving and wrestling between EFF MPs and security officials, water bottles being hurled, and a thrown fire extinguisher shattering a door on Tuesday afternoon, were distressing.

EFF MPs have vowed to shun President Zuma in the National Assembly, they do not believe he is fit for office and refuse to hear him. Hence more violence in the central legislature, and yet another bundling out of MPs from the chamber.

Watching lawmakers stooping to the type of conduct rarely even seen at a rugby match nowadays, the question among political analysts is how this affects citizens who might be disgruntled.

It undoubtedly sets an undesirable tone, where disruption and physical clashes are considered a legitimate response to problems. Worsening encounters like these offer leadership of a most unsavoury kind. They are the very antithesis of building the country and democracy, which is what MPs are there to do.

Violent protests and vandalism were there before the red band of 25 first stepped into Parliament almost exactly two years ago. But scuffles and fisticuffs in the central legislature – and damage as of Tuesday – serve only to endorse it.

A country’s president must appear in Parliament as regularly as possible to account to the people. It would be unacceptable, and certainly not democratic, for reckless conduct by some MPs to render the Assembly a no-go zone to him.

The individual’s flaws cannot be allowed to interfere with this principle. But the EFF believes they should, meaning the prospect of more undignified clashes.

The EFF should consider another way forward, if they must: absenting themselves as the president rises to speak. This would signal disdain without turning our Parliament into a shambles.