Auricle from Ukraine

The brawl that erupted in the Ukrainian parliament last week would not have seemed at all strange to Indians, given that our legislatures are becoming more adversarial than originally envisaged by the preceptors of parliamentary democracy.

But the reaction of a Ukrainian journalist to the unruliness of his own country’s parliamentarians should find resonance here. He dressed up as a rabbit, complete with long ears, and interviewed lawmakers as they arrived for a sitting of the house. His rationale was impeccable too.

If the parliament resembled a circus more than anything else, then people who frequented it should dress accordingly. Obviously since that country’s parliamentarians did not see his argument, he wore his clarification literally on his sleeve.

Besides, it was not as if he was being unresponsive to the lawmakers’ gripe, for he showed he was all ears. In India, we are used to our legislators donning appropriate attire (some would call them costumes) when they come a-wooing for votes, and it does seem befitting that the common man too should return the compliment, even with animal grace.

In recent years, from Ukraine to India, Bolivia to Malaysia, legislative antics are assuming supra-comical proportions. Even at the ‘Mother of all Parliaments’, the Speaker of the House of Commons reprimanded unruly MPs last week, exhorting them to seek treatment from the House doctor if need be. This thread of commonality between the elected members of legislatures across continents clearly needs to be examined more closely, as does the novel solution of the Ukrainian journalist.