I first met Dr. Kendal Major, Speaker of the House of Assembly, when we were both Rotarians and I think we share a legitimate fondness for each other, but the old saying, when you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas, is becoming more and more applicable to the “e-mail scandal” with his response to the Court ruling.

As most people know by now, Mr. Jerome Fitzgerald (PLP), Minister of Education, read and tabled private e-mails of the environmental group, Save The Bays in Parliament, and the Supreme Court found him wanting and fined him $150,000.

So a few weeks later, and after obvious reflection of the Courts Ruling, Dr. Major is reported as saying “In hindsight he should have stopped Mr Fitzgerald and said in the future no emails will be read in the House of Assembly unless they are vetted.”

However, there is a big but that I would not have expected. He stated, “he does not believe the judiciary should interfere with matters in Parliament and said “respectfully” the court ought to mind its own business.” And, he “repeated that he thought the court’s ruling “violated the principle that underpinned the country’s democracy.”

Well these latter statements directly contradict the first.

The Court would not have had to make the ruling had the e-mails not been tabled.

Parliament made this a matter for the Court to decide. The court did not simply decide on its own to decide the case before it.

And the Judiciary is there to decide these matters when Parliament or anyone else overreach with their powers. A Parliamentarian has as many responsibilities as he has power. They go hand in hand.

Dr. Major controls the shovel in this case, but won’t stop digging. I'm surprised he would want to protect his colleague with wrongdoing as decided by the Court. The speaker should be upholding Justice that keeps Parliamentarians in check.

The Courts Ruling is a protection of Democracy, not a violation, and the matter should be quietly left where it stands for the sake of decency and justice.