Liberty on the line

As most of us head to our beaches and balconies in the hopes of catching a summer breeze and perhaps a much-deserved siesta, our Parliament seems to be bucking the trend, having apparently awoken from its years-long slumber. The country’s legislative branch, a collection of 128 sectarian officials representing a flawed and arcane electoral process, has been unusually busy of late. The 69-odd draft laws recently thrown at the foot of its door have been picked up by the corresponding committees and subcommittees, which comprise one of our most inefficient branches of government. With so much work to do, one would think that Parliament would be a bustling hub of deputies and their staff scurrying from one office to another at all hours of night and day. But last April, as an experiment, I decided to knock on the office doors of each of the members of the subcommittee mulling