Ac­cu­sa­tions and counter-ac­cu­sa­tions abound in the run-up to every gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. The race card fol­lows close­ly be­hind. The two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties, PNM and UNC, are an­tag­o­nists in this com­pet­i­tive ef­fort to score po­lit­i­cal points.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader has ar­gued that the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety in a civ­il claim brought by a state en­ter­prise against a group of con­trac­tors and the for­mer min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, are racial­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

The tim­ing of the pub­lic­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with these al­le­ga­tions is un­doubt­ed­ly bad, com­ing as they do in a gen­er­al elec­tion year. These al­le­ga­tions are dat­ed and are as­so­ci­at­ed with events that oc­curred ten years ago. Pre­sent­ing them now rais­es a few ques­tions. What has hap­pened in the last ten years? Shouldn’t this have been dealt with much ear­li­er? And why a civ­il ac­tion?

Cor­rup­tion and abuse of of­fice are crim­i­nal charges. The dif­fi­cul­ty is that crim­i­nal charges have a high bur­den of proof, while civ­il charges are eas­i­er to lay and val­i­date the cha­rade that ac­tion is be­ing tak­en. The UNC op­er­a­tives are not blame-free in this re­gard. When in gov­ern­ment, they took sim­i­lar ac­tion against di­rec­tors in Petrotrin, eTecK and Ude­cott in the civ­il court with the ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of the then at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

On as­sum­ing of­fice, the PNM Gov­ern­ment, with the in­volve­ment of its at­tor­ney gen­er­al, dis­con­tin­ued ac­tions in the Petrotrin and eTecK mat­ters. There was fall­out in the Petrotrin case with the Vin­cent Nel­son mat­ter, which re­flect­ed poor­ly on both the cur­rent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and the pre­vi­ous UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The cir­cum­stances clear­ly demon­strate that both sides have pur­sued mat­ters to score po­lit­i­cal points rather than pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est. The pub­lic has a right to be con­cerned about how pub­lic funds have been used, mis­used, or abused in state en­ter­pris­es or in gov­ern­ment.

Pay­ing for un­nec­es­sary probes for “miss­ing” files, pay­ing le­gal fees for ap­pear­ances be­fore the Privy Coun­cil to sat­is­fy a min­is­ter’s pique, or pur­su­ing cas­es for po­lit­i­cal gain un­der the guise of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est angers the pub­lic. The civ­il ac­tion against se­lect­ed Ude­cott of­fi­cers and di­rec­tors com­menced in 2012, has lan­guished through three ad­min­is­tra­tions, and has yet to reach tri­al.

The key point is that both po­lit­i­cal par­ties have a vest­ed in­ter­est in mov­ing the nar­ra­tive away from the re­al is­sues of na­tion­al con­cern. These is­sues in­clude the de­cline of the en­er­gy sec­tor and the need to re­bal­ance the econ­o­my with re­al­is­tic busi­ness al­ter­na­tives. Close­ly linked with this is ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

We can­not solve these dif­fi­cul­ties by bor­row­ing to fund con­sum­ables and re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures to main­tain “lifestyles”. The na­tion­al debts must be re­paid from tight rev­enues, which means that there is less mon­ey to spend on oth­er pri­or­i­ties.

The geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties are stark. Pres­i­dent Trump has made the world more un­cer­tain with his em­pha­sis on tar­iffs, which pun­ish friend and foe alike, plus their like­ly in­fla­tion­ary im­pact. As a small in­de­pen­dent coun­try, our sit­u­a­tion is more com­pli­cat­ed, and cit­i­zens need to know what po­lit­i­cal par­ties pro­pose to ad­dress these chal­lenges.

The em­pha­sis should be on com­mu­ni­cat­ing these re­al­i­ties to cit­i­zens along with the poli­cies nec­es­sary to ad­dress these chal­lenges. Po­lit­i­cal par­ties must put for­ward can­di­dates with demon­strat­ed man­age­r­i­al com­pe­ten­cies, and they must out­line mean­ing­ful strate­gies. This re­quires re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship, not the emp­ty tirades and plat­i­tudes served up as en­ter­tain­ing dis­trac­tions aimed at di­vid­ing the coun­try along dan­ger­ous lines.