I refer to New Straits Times' Zainul Ariffin's comment that our MPs are not ready for prime time television, parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang's apparent derision of MPs who made sexist, offensive and silly remarks and Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohamad Nazri Abdul Aziz's advice to only 'one or two stupid MPs' that it was better to keep quiet and let others suspect they were stupid rather than opening their mouths and letting others confirm it.

The campaigning for improvement in the quality of parliamentary debate and performance is always laudable but not to the extent of being elitist in forgetting the following principles:

1) If the citizenry is accorded freedom of speech, so must their representatives.

2) Even a fool has the right to be heard. Sometimes there is something to learned from even fool.

3) At worse, the utterance of stupidity reinforces with clarify that which we know, by comparison, to be true. There is, therefore, still value in allowing the foolish to speak which is the thrust of freedom of speech.

4) It is therefore not right, in the name of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and prestige of Parliament to criticise and stifle those who want to speak freely and even foolishly.

5) If parliamentary representatives are foolish and silly, it must be recollected in their defence that they were voted in by their respective constituencies - so why single out the representatives and not their constituencies for criticism?

6) In a democracy, the right to speak cannot be accorded to only those who are more intelligent and know what they are talking about.

If one wants to raise the quality of our parliamentary representatives, raise first the quality of their constituencies which were responsible for voting them in - by proper education. Look no further. An education system that has failed is the root cause of the malaise of poor parliamentary performance.

It is no point going through here the many faults of our education system and how it has suffered irreparable damage by politics.

Suffice to say that at this moment, I am in total support for even court jesters being given prime time TV airing. At least for their 10 percent pay rise , they give me some humour and laughs.