Dana See­ta­hal

Per­haps, it is sim­ply that they have been on the cam­paign trail longer, but it seems to me that the PNM's plat­form speak­ers are fo­cussing more on per­son­al in­sults that at­tack­ing the oth­er side on any re­al is­sues. I hope, when the UNC gets in­to full flight, they do not fol­low in like fash­ion and con­tribute to the de­gen­er­a­tion of this elec­tion cam­paign. In their St Au­gus­tine meet­ing, PNM Min­is­ter and MP, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, fo­cussed her at­tacks on var­i­ous UNC fig­ures, re­fer­ring to them as snakes and oth­er more vivid un­pleas­ant crea­tures. In an­oth­er meet­ing, the usu­al­ly mild Min­is­ter Amery Browne was heard de­scrib­ing a UNC Sen­a­tor as a sepul­chre of dead bones. Then last week, Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, in full flight, choose to term some UNC mem­bers as "mis­fits" and "lu­natics."

Is this to be the lev­el of these min­is­ters' con­tri­bu­tion? I was ap­palled when I heard the clips on the ra­dio and read them in the news­pa­per. I could not be­lieve that peo­ple who con­sid­er them­selves in­tel­li­gent had to re­sort to such crude tac­tics. Good plat­form speak­ers are known not mere­ly for their loud voic­es (a mi­cro­phone can take care of that), but for their wit and quick ri­postes. So far, this has been lack­ing from what I have seen of the cam­paign trail. Ap­par­ent­ly, many prospec­tive can­di­dates ap­pear to be of the view that per­son­al in­sults will do the job. They seem not to grasp that the on­ly per­sons with whom they can hold sway with such tac­tics are the al­ready con­vert­ed. Nat­u­ral­ly, when they preach to the con­vert­ed in this fash­ion, the lat­ter will re­spond with sup­port.

But what about the un­de­cid­ed, the shift­ing vote–those who make the dif­fer­ence in the close­ly-fought con­tests? Will they be per­suad­ed to vote for who­ev­er can come up with the vilest names? I think not. I re­call be­ing taught, years ago, that one of the ways that speak­ers who have faulty ar­gu­ments try to per­suade you to their way of think­ing is through "ar­gu­men­tum ad hominum." The idea is to at­tack the per­son, in­stead of try­ing to re­spond to their ar­gu­ment with facts and rea­son; di­vert at­ten­tion by mak­ing per­son­al at­tacks. There are many is­sues that can arise in these elec­tions and many mat­ters that may rea­son­ably be raised as to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of var­i­ous can­di­dates (or prospec­tive can­di­dates). What is not ac­cept­able, how­ev­er, is to de­cry per­sons for their phys­i­cal short­com­ings.

The fact that a per­son is fat should not be made an elec­tion joke or that she/he may be thought to be ug­ly. Sim­i­lar­ly, a phys­i­cal de­fect is not a mat­ter for joke or scorn. In fact, I would have more ad­mi­ra­tion for some­one who was able to achieve de­spite these de­fects, phys­i­cal or oth­er­wise. I al­so think it was par­tic­u­lar­ly un­for­tu­nate that Min­is­ter Mc­Don­ald should de­scribe any­one as a "lu­natic" on a pub­lic plat­form. The min­is­ter, in her ca­pac­i­ty as such, is an ex­em­plar, and ought to know that not on­ly is the term po­lit­i­cal­ly in­cor­rect, but could be re­gard­ed as in­sult­ing to our men­tal­ly-chal­lenged pop­u­la­tion. Bear­ing in mind this type of ill­ness is one that car­ries with it a stig­ma for life, it is not some­thing to be dis­par­aged in this fash­ion. It might be ar­gued that the in­ten­tion was not to den­i­grate men­tal­ly-chal­lenged per­sons, but why use the term at all?

It is al­so use­ful to bear in mind that when one re­sorts to cer­tain tac­tics, it is a sign of des­per­a­tion. The ra­tio­nal pop­u­lace in T&T, to my mind, have shown over the years that they do not ap­pre­ci­ate per­son­al at­tacks that have noth­ing to do with any­thing. Last elec­tion, I re­call an at­tempt was made to dub Mr Man­ning an adul­ter­er who had had a child out­side of his mar­riage some­time ago. The is­sue nev­er took off and, in fact, quick­ly fell flat. The rea­son? Pos­si­bly be­cause such a di­rect per­son­al at­tack smelled of des­per­a­tion, and al­so ap­peared to have noth­ing to do with the man who was now be­fore the peo­ple. In sim­i­lar vein is the now as­ser­tions by Mr Man­ning, in re­la­tion to the 23-year-old Scott Drug Re­port. If no one was charged then, and noth­ing pro­ba­tive em­anat­ed from that re­port, why raise it now if not mere­ly to be scan­dalous? So much wa­ter has passed un­der the bridge since then.

For starters, we have had at least four gov­ern­ments since that time, and one at­tempt­ed coup. Mat­ters per­tain­ing to the Scott Drug Re­port and the O'Hal­lo­ran scan­dal should be dropped from cam­paigns in 2010. They are ir­rel­e­vant to­day. It seems to me what we should be fo­cussing on what has tran­spired since the last gen­er­al elec­tion: what rea­sons there might be for re-elect­ing the PNM af­ter over two years in of­fice, or for re­plac­ing them. Any­one who can come up with in­tel­li­gent and wit­ty ar­gu­ments, to sup­port one side or the oth­er, will be bound to sway the un­de­cid­ed vot­ers–those who will car­ry this elec­tion. We look for­ward with an­tic­i­pa­tion to a keen­ly-fought and ex­cit­ing elec­tion in the next four weeks. Any side which fails to pro­vide in­tel­li­gent food for thought, hu­mour and some good pi­cong should be con­signed to the po­lit­i­cal dog­house.