CLERK of the National Assembly, Mr. Sherlock Isaacs needs to be commended, as do all professionals and technocrats in the nation serving the people who remain true to themselves and execute their respective mandates, within their given portfolio of designated responsibilities, without any other consideration but to ethically do their job well and with integrity and commitment; and especially those professionals who have the strength of will and fortitude not to succumb to ‘kith and kin’ appeals, blandishments, or threats of any kind.

The great and illustrious Bard, revered for centuries, William Shakespeare, could have learnt a lesson or two from the politicians now occupying Opposition benches in Guyana’s House of Assembly, which has become a place of entertainment and plots galore instead of an august institution where serious consideration of the nation’s business is conducted, with the people’s needs and rights being made a priority.

Today Guyana’s Parliament is no longer respected, because it is a sham – a place where the most unconscionable and dastardly actions and venom-filled, rancorous abuses of a personal nature have replaced sober and insightful deliberations of the nation’s business; a place where personal self-aggrandisement agendas have subsumed national concerns; a place where dissimulation has replaced truth and the pursuit of real justice; where criminals are given unearned rights and respect and law-abiding citizens are victimised and intimidated.

Of recent times the Clerk of the National Assembly, keeper of the gateway to law and order in Guyana, Sherlock Isaacs, has come under fire several times for refusing to subsume his professional integrity to any other consideration; and this courage and strength displayed while under attack for keeping true to his mandated portfolio and guarding the interests of the nation well; instead of surrendering his ethics to a preferred and select few, deserves the nation’s plaudits and a national award.

The President is doing what the President is mandated to do; the Leader of the House is doing what he is mandated to do; and the Government’s Chief Whip is doing what she is mandated to do. And Sherlock Isaacs is executing his mandate of ensuring that the Standing Orders of the National Assembly are upheld, disregarding any other consideration but what is right and sanctioned by the laws of the land.

These are veterans who are exceptionally knowledgeable about their spheres of responsibilities and who are tasked with various areas of responsibility peculiar to their mandated portfolios; so an immature, reckless, self-serving Opposition collective cannot sway or dissuade them from their unerring paths of service to the nation.

Until and unless the current crop of politicians occupying the Opposition benches cease their immature, puerile behaviour, reconsider their irrational and intractable positions that are unerringly taking this nation on a retrograde pathway, and begin to deal with the nation’s business in ways that would not propel self-serving impediments to national welfare and development; Sherlock Isaacs has proven, time and again, that he has the courage and fortitude to guard the bastion of Guyana’s laws and the enclave of order of society well.
Kudos to Guyana’s Clerk of the National Assembly for an outstanding performance occasioned by the need to sustain order in the House and disallowing Opposition’s unreasoning theatrics to prevail.

He is a professional serving the nation who has proven himself worthy of emulation – a noteworthy role model for every member of the public service fraternity. Through protecting and sustaining the imperatives that guard the hallowed halls of the National Assembly, Sherlock Isaacs has remained true to the flag of his country and his personal badge of honour.