Bul­ly­ing is de­scribed gen­er­al­ly as an in­di­vid­ual, an or­gan­i­sa­tion, even a coun­try, us­ing its su­pe­ri­or pow­er to take ad­van­tage in a sit­u­a­tion of con­flict. This most ter­ri­fy­ing fea­ture of the times sur­faced in Par­lia­ment this week, first through Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Bar­ry Padarath, who charged mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment bench for con­sis­tent­ly bul­ly­ing him and his fam­i­ly mem­bers. That, how­ev­er, was quick­ly coun­tered by one of his own, Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne. The lat­ter, who is now amongst those who have been “back­benched” by the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal hi­er­ar­chy, made MP Padarath’s claim out to be “hyp­o­crit­i­cal,” not­ing he has been guilty of bul­ly­ing her.

While it may be tempt­ing to place the claims and coun­ters of bul­ly­ing in the con­text of be­ing par for the course when politi­cians fall out with each oth­er, they must be un­der­stood in the con­text of the dai­ly bul­ly­ing, as it is dis­played in schools amongst stu­dents and oth­er as­pects of dai­ly life here in T&T.

With­out ques­tion, the bul­ly­ing at­ti­tude adopt­ed and prac­tised from kinder­garten to now the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, is linked to the crim­i­nal­i­ty which per­vades our so­ci­ety and world of to­day. That prac­tice pre­vails when in­di­vid­u­als, groups and coun­tries can­not get their way, and they turn in­evitably to ex­ert­ing their pow­er and re­sources over oth­ers to get what they want from those not so blessed.

The psy­chol­o­gists have al­so found that not on­ly ju­ve­nile bul­lies grow in­to adult of­fend­ers, but those bul­lied on at­tain­ing adult­hood, size, strength and the will re­quired to take ad­van­tage of oth­ers, do so with se­ri­ous con­se­quences for so­ci­ety.

It has be­come the norm across the world that bul­ly­ing, the strong over the weak, is the cur­ren­cy of coun­tries and con­ti­nents in­ter­act­ing with each oth­er. Rus­sia against Ukraine, Is­rael, con­joined with and sup­port­ed by the mighty USA and its Eu­ro­pean al­lies, over the pow­er­less peo­ple of Gaza, now ex­tend­ed to Lebanon and pos­si­bly soon to oth­er parts of the Arab and Is­lam­ic world.

What is most hor­ren­dous, just like with school bul­ly­ing, is that those coun­tries not di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly in­volved are timid­ly stand­ing around rais­ing no more than apolo­getic voic­es against the gross in­jus­tice. In so do­ing, they are in re­al­i­ty giv­ing tac­it sup­port to the bul­lies.

We ven­ture that in ad­di­tion to the de­sire of the pow­er­ful with a dis­tort­ed sense of how their might is to be used, there are those who are un­able to con­ceive of, ac­quire and have faith in the pow­er of di­a­logue to re­solve con­flict through rea­son­ing. In this re­spect, such per­sons are no dif­fer­ent to the inar­tic­u­late and un­in­formed youths who are maim­ing and killing each oth­er for the flim­si­est of rea­sons.

We don’t claim spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise to re­spond de­fin­i­tive­ly to the bul­ly­ing phe­nom­e­non. What we do recog­nise, though, is that the mo­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ty have been pro­vid­ed by the re­al­i­ty in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment for an in­formed, non-par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion among mem­bers of both Hous­es. The ob­jec­tive must be for the Par­lia­ment to de­vise an ap­proach to the is­sue of bul­ly­ing.

Out of such a dis­cus­sion, ex­pert psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers, teach­ers, par­ents, and the rel­e­vant po­lice de­part­ments must be con­tract­ed to de­vel­op work­ing so­lu­tions to the in­hu­mane prac­tice of bul­ly­ing. It’s the least this Par­lia­ment can do to ser­vice the needs of the so­ci­ety.