An elec­tion date has not yet been an­nounced but po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing is al­ready in full swing. Hard­ly a week goes by with­out one of the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties hold­ing a pub­lic meet­ing or walk abouts. The op­po­si­tion is well in­to the screen­ing of can­di­dates and on all sides sharp po­lit­i­cal ex­changes seem to be the or­der of the day.

This week the rhetoric has been par­tic­u­lar­ly heat­ed, with ver­bal barbs from the plat­forms of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), lead par­ty in the rul­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) coali­tion, and the main op­po­si­tion group, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). It looks like it's go­ing to be an elec­tion cam­paign in which few punch­es are pulled.The Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley en­gaged in some un­for­tu­nate rhetoric when he said of the prime min­is­ter's un­re­lent­ing at­tacks on him and Faris Al-Rawi, "she could bark at meh dog be­cause I gon ig­nore she cat."

Bawdy hu­mour and dou­ble en­ten­dre are not un­known in our so­ci­ety, and any­one who has ever heard a ca­lyp­so is im­me­di­ate­ly go­ing to see Row­ley's com­ments in a cer­tain light. But it is un­ac­cept­able rhetoric from a po­ten­tial prime min­is­ter, and it con­tains more than a whiff of sex­ist machis­mo di­rect­ed at the coun­try's first fe­male prime min­is­ter.

There is no ex­cuse for that type of talk, not even in the in­creas­ing­ly bare-knuck­led at­mos­phere of the pre-elec­tion cam­paign. The wom­ens' arm of the UNC has called on Row­ley to apol­o­gise. It is some­thing that he should se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er do­ing.

It is no­tice­able too that there are in­creas­ing­ly ac­ri­mo­nious ex­changes on­line where, in the large­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed ter­rain of cy­ber­space, var­i­ous so­cial net­works have been tak­ing the de­bate to un­prece­dent­ed and of­ten dis­turb­ing lev­els.For these and oth­er rea­sons, this is a good time to ap­peal to every­one in the po­lit­i­cal fray to ho­n­our their com­mit­ment to the code of con­duct for par­ties con­test­ing elec­tions in T&T.

When the code was fi­nalised by TT's lead­ing civ­il so­ci­ety groups last Ju­ly, all the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties vol­un­tar­i­ly signed on, in­di­cat­ing their will­ing­ness to re­spect to its pro­vi­sions. They and their sup­port­ers can­not now dis­re­gard the very stan­dards to which they have agreed.A po­lit­i­cal code of con­duct should not been seen as an at­tempt to sti­fle de­bates about per­ti­nent is­sues or the plat­form pi­cong that have long been part of T&T's vi­brant elec­tion cul­ture. Rather, the aim is to en­sure that cam­paign is­sues can be de­bat­ed re­spon­si­bly.

By sign­ing the code of con­duct the par­ties and politi­cians agreed to pro­mote and en­force re­spect, tol­er­ance, har­mo­ny and peace amongst their sup­port­ers and the gen­er­al pub­lic. They must avoid prac­tices that pro­mote di­vi­sive­ness and dis­re­spect of any par­ty, can­di­date, rep­re­sen­ta­tive or mem­ber.The code al­so states that par­ties and their can­di­dates must not at­tempt to as­sas­si­nate the char­ac­ter of or make defam­a­to­ry com­ments about any in­di­vid­ual, fam­i­ly, pro­fes­sion­al group or sec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in just the last few days, some have al­ready come dan­ger­ous­ly close to breach­ing these pro­vi­sions. They need to be re­mind­ed that the cheap po­lit­i­cal points scored that way are an un­nec­es­sary dis­trac­tion from the im­por­tant so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal is­sues that need to be ad­dressed in the up­com­ing cam­paign.