I was expecting much more at Wednesday’s sitting of the Legislative Assembly.

I am sure you were all too.

The antics from some of the elder Members of the Legislative Assembly with hurt pride blinding their judgment was there for all of us to see as it was televised live.

They seem to fail to understand that they are servants of us the electorate. We don’t care that their silly pride has been hurt.

Independent members, Arden McLean and Ezzard Miller, both ex-government ministers know the games that are played and I assumed they had enough experience, common sense and duty not to behave as wounded children who did not get what they wanted when the cookie jar was first handed round.

Actress Lena Dunham said it best with her quote, “I quit acting when I was 11 because I was cast as a bouncing ball in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and I felt slighted and wounded.”

Premier Alden McLaughlin had attempted to nominate McLean and Miller to take a seat on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) but they refused.

Why?

Because they said they had already been rejected when the LA was sworn in because government wanted to put the opposition leader, McKeeva Bush, on the PAC instead,

McLean said, “I accepted the nomination during the swearing in ceremony to assist government and avoid having the leader of the opposition, who is the former minister of finance, being on it. I asked for this to avoid this quandary that we find ourselves in. However, I was resoundingly rejected.”

McLean thought the premier should have had the courtesy to ask him again if he wanted to serve before nominating him, but he had received no call or written request from McLaughlin. He said the chair had called asking if he was mindful to do so but he had told him no.

“I put country before me, and the government of the day decided they didn’t want me on PAC and preferred leader of the opposition,” he said.

Putting country first the second time round should have been foremost in his decision not the rejection. He would have been a bigger man and the country better for it, too.

I agree, the premier should have asked him first. However, has he always done the right thing?

“It is wrong, unfair and disrespectful to not discuss this with me first and I decline the nomination,” he said.

Oh, please.

And Miller, for all his fighting for Caymanians first, also forgot he should have been doing what he was elected for when he also declined the invitation.

His excuse

He did not wish to serve on a committee “that defies all parliamentary conventions”, as he pointed to the premier’s nomination of the former minister of finance to it.

He told the government not to start its four years in office playing games.

It is very disappointing to all of us that two of our most experienced members think hurt pride comes before their duty.

Last Sunday (1) the prescribed reading in most Anglican and Episcopal churches was from an Apocryphal Book the free-churches do not accept as scripture because when the decision was made it had not been written in both Hebrew and Greek. They were wrong it was as has been found.

The book is Ecclesiasticus or Sirach as it is also known so as not to get it mixed up with the Old Testament Book Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) Chapter 10 v 18: “Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women”.

V 12 also says “The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord”.

McLean and Miller forsake their country too and the LA member who accepted the nomination, even though he was the very last man the cookie jar was offered to, was Captain Eugene Ebanks!!