In order to allow adult legislators to focus on essential duties such as name-calling and finger-pointing, the less important work of governing will be outsourced to the territory’s new Youth Parliament, officials announced this week.
Veteran leaders are touting the move as an opportunity for Virgin Islands Millennials to prove themselves once and for all.
“The generation of smart phones and Facebook sometimes gets a bad rap, but we decided to give them a chance,” Premier Dr. Orlando Smith explained Friday during a launching ceremony. “Yes, they are starting at the bottom, but if they show dedication to nonessential tasks such as lawmaking, they may get to make a more meaningful contribution one day.”
Inexperience
Though the youths are relatively inexperienced, leaders are confident that they can’t possibly make more mistakes than their Baby Boomer counterparts.
“Remember when we accidentally banned paintball guns and flare guns this year and the governor had to amend the law?” asked Deputy Premier Dr. Kedrick Pickering. “I’m guessing that young people would not have done that. They love paintball.”
It is also unlikely that a Millennial legislature would have made the mistake of passing a cybercrime bill that could have subjected journalists to prison time, as the House of Assembly did last year.
“There was a lot of online discussion about that bill before we passed it, and unlike us I suspect youths would have paid attention,” Dr. Smith said of the law, which the HOA eventually amended.
Internationally, leaders added, Baby Boomers are largely responsible for global warming and the 2008 financial crisis, among other problems.
“With that record, you could hardly do worse,” Education and Culture Minister Myron Walwyn told the youths as he encouraged them to take a leading role in lawmaking. “And if you do make a mistake, history has shown that you can always fix it later.”
Speed
The young people are expected to work much faster than their elder counterparts, who tend to pass about 15 laws each year in spite of annually promising around 50.
“Youths haven’t had time to build up personal grudges and to adopt inflexible attitudes,” Dr. Pickering said. “Thus, they can simply gather together, debate constructively, and pass laws.”
Moreover, as the youths demonstrated during their first debate last week, they are adept at doing independent research, a task that adult legislators phased out long ago as they struggled to juggle more important responsibilities such as bloviating, griping and arguing with the Speaker of the House.
“Most of the young people even know how to use The Google,” said Communications and Works Minister Mark Vanterpool. “Thus, they might notice if a law has been copied verbatim from, say, a piece of Australian legislation.”
He added that he has high hopes that the young people will quickly learn more advanced legislative skills.
“It’s obvious that they’re new to lawmaking, as their etiquette and diplomacy were impeccable during the Friday sitting,” Mr. Vanterpool said. “But that’s to be expected until they get a little experience under their belts.”
Important functions
As the youths take over nonessential duties such as legislating, their elder counterparts are looking forward to focusing on more important functions.
Opposition Leader Julian Fraser said he is particularly excited to ramp up his campaign of launching confusing attacks against political opponents.
“That kind of thing is never easy, but I’ve done my best to make a career of it whenever I wasn’t tied up with governing,” he said. “With the young folks backing me, I can promise obfuscation like you’ve never seen.”
He added that he is also looking forward to devoting more time to his ongoing feud with his opposition colleague Andrew Fahie.
Mr. Fahie agreed, and said that he intends to send out more press releases than ever before.
“I’ve been sending out one or two each week,” he said. “But once the youth legislature is up and running, you can expect to see four or five a day!”
Meanwhile, Mr. Vanterpool said he will devote his extra time to distributing untendered petty contracts.
“I can think of several roads that can be resurfaced repeatedly from now until the end of time,” he said. “And that’s just the beginning. Thanks, young people!”
Disclaimer: Dateline: Paradise is a column and occasionally contains satirical “news” articles that are entirely fictional.
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