24. You don’t elect them for this

After a very long time I watched the Lok Sabha TV and also Rajya Sabha proceedings.

It was indeed something that made me really worried.

The members are paid well by the exchequer from the tax money annually people like me are paying.

And what they are really doing?

It is something that we can not be proud of. Their behavior is shameful. 

But since we, the voters, are helpless all we can do is let us forget them and let them enjoy on our hard-earned money.

While watching the unruly conduct of our representatives I recollected my journalism days when I had filed a story after watching one incident on television and another after reading the agencies reports.

.

I think it was the year 2000.

In Turkey’s Parliament fist-fighting broke out between dozens of deputies and an opposition deputy died of a heart attack shortly afterwards. 

Fezi Sihanlioglu, 56, a deputy of the Opposition True Path Party, died in hospital little over an hour after being struck during fighting in the Parliament chamber. 

Witnesses said the fighting erupted during an emotional debate on Government proposals to change procedures allowing swifter passage of legislation, including laws vital to the country’s International Monetary Fund-backed economic reforms. 

Fighting broke out around the chamber, involving deputies of the then Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party and his right-wing coalition partners, the Nationalist Action Party as well as the Opposition. 

Soon after this we received another news.

This time it was in Taiwan when a Taiwanese legislator struck a female legislator and pulled her hair during a committee meeting, sending the women to the hospital with major injuries. 

The incident involved independent lawmaker Lo Fu-Chu and Ms Diane Lee, a former TV anchorwoman who was one of the legislature’s most outspoken lawmakers. Ms. Lee later told that the tangle started during a meeting of the education committee. 

Mr. Lo denied the charges saying he had never hit Ms Lee and ‘She is a woman and I am a man. How could I do that’ but a videotape of the scuffle recorded the scene. 

Our own MPs and MLAs will be glad to read this story and may proudly claim that they still have a long way to go.