There is good and bad news coming out of our once august assembly, as parliament opened this week to close again for another quite undeserved break. The good news is that this time the average age of those who entertained us with their speeches is lower. The bad news is that it doesn’t make one hell of a difference. The level of mediocrity is as astounding as in recent years.

The contrast between the outpourings from the two sides of the House was rather staggering. While some delivered measured, well thought-out speeches in a tone worthy of the place they were elected to occupy, others mistook the assembly for a kes savon and forgot that the electoral campaign is over, and that it is time to run the country. Some were unfortunately women, thus reinforcing the prejudice against their own species. 

Even those who delivered a reasonably cohesive speech in good English could not resist the temptation to go into a venomous tirade against members of the opposition, missing a great opportunity to rise as statesmen and women rather than act merely as partisan followers who are only good at pleasing their leader. And they equally stooped by singing their leader’s praises to the high heavens so many times that we had to reach for the sick bucket.  

“If you were missing former MP Ravi Rutnah, rejoice. He ain’t gone nowhere. His replacement is going to be so much fun and will make the circus this term as entertaining as it was.”

In this circus, which we will be following without fail, two members stand out and can be trusted to provide us with the dose of entertainment needed to make the sessions worth our while. First, the one whom women had placed so much hope in – Best Loser PPS Tania Diolle. Her maiden speech, the first intervention in parliamentary debate on the government programme, had nothing to envy the style of her predecessor, Sandya Boygah. If Boygah had shocked everyone when, during a budget speech debate, she told the whole world about her cesarean section and her personal tribulations, “La Tania Diolle” as she referred to herself several times, was not far behind: she used her allotted time to talk about her whole life, starting with her childhood, her personality, her school, her travels, her mother and the people she encountered. She went on to give us some free lessons in amateur psychology and ended by quoting bland lyrics from an uninspiring pop singer – Rihanna! And of course we had to listen again to a large dose of belittling the opposition and praising the supreme leader. Those who followed the debates will also have been struck by the number of basic mistakes of grammar and syntax (27 according to my count) that she made. 

The one who takes the cake, though, is by far Mouvement Liberater’s MP Ismaël Rawoo. If you were missing former MP Ravi Rutnah, rejoice. He ain’t gone nowhere. His replacement is going to be so much fun and will make the circus this term as entertaining as it was.

This young MP is so important that he had allegedly asked civil servants to call him “honourable”. His maiden speech revealed a politician rather unfamiliar with decorum and etiquette. He delivered, with a lot of difficulty, a disjointed speech which he must have kept since the electoral campaign. Addressing “Mr THE Speaker Sir”, he talked little about the programme and much more about his great leader, his party’s victory at the election and the “bad losers” in the opposition. He bragged so much using base, silly humour and name calling that, for a moment, the National Assembly became like a school courtyard with a few confused kids grinning at jokes cracked by a dim-witted, happy-looking clown.

Yes, we have a larger proportion of youth in our National Assembly today. It is wonderful. Are we better off for it? Not judging by the first impression. Unfortunately, many won’t have a chance to make a second one. 

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