Parliament – Helmets and Pads Not Included

A good friend of mine told me once a long time ago that she doesn’t understand why people call for cultural tolerance since the word tolerance inherently means keeping people at an arm’s length, when we should be calling for cultural understanding. Now change cultural to sectarian in that sentence, and apply it to our Parliament, and I would be happy with simple appeasement and civility.

Today, I attended my first session of the Bahraini Parliament, and although I expected a fight since there was a major issue on the table which certain parties in parliament and admittedly their puppet masters, the government, did not want to be addressed, I did not expect there to be a serge of sectarian tensions and sectarian remarks strewn across the floor. I’m not taking sides in this issue, yet, but I have to say that the lack of ability to compromise and the lack of knowledge of the political game at hand and in some cases the fundamentalist views of certain members from “both sides of the aisle” is causing this parliament to do more harm than good. It seems to me that our great MPs, all of them, have lost track of what’s important, the people.

How they hell do you get a racially charged parliament to pass secular laws that benefit the whole population, and if this continues, this will definitely spill onto the streets and then what? Mayhem again? Back to the days of the mid 90’s when Bahrain was on the verge of a civil war or even worse a coup d'état? I have said, and I still say that this is healthy, Parliament has to bring these sectarian issues to the surface so that people can start having dialogue which leads to understanding and at the least tolerance.

However there is one crucial element missing. You see, In any work place you will always find a clown, a trouble maker, a hero, a simple person who doesn’t care much about anything, a conciliatory person, and a leader. In our parliament (the workplace of our great MPs), though, there seems to be an over abundance of wanna be heroes and clowns, and no leader what so ever for MPs to look up to.

Today the session got to a point where I feared that it would turn physical like it did once before, and even though I don’t think that this issue will resolve itself soon, I do believe that if a solution is not found to the core issues facing parliament, then becoming a Bahraini MP will be like participating in an extreme sport, helmets and pads not included.