One of the more pleas­ing sights com­ing out of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign this week was a video of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go East can­di­date Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) can­di­date Wat­son Duke em­brac­ing each oth­er, in a friend­ly mo­ment, af­ter cross­ing paths at the height of can­vass­ing in their con­stituen­cy in To­ba­go.

Sim­i­lar in­ci­dents have been wit­nessed at var­i­ous stages of the cur­rent cam­paign in­volv­ing those mem­bers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and sup­port­ers who clear­ly un­der­stand that pol­i­tics does not need to be a blood sport, and that, at the end of the day, even if we are fierce po­lit­i­cal ri­vals, we all must live and work to­geth­er to­wards the build­ing up of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Yet, there is still too much ug­li­ness in our coun­try and in par­tic­u­lar our pol­i­tics that is be­ing per­pet­u­at­ed by cer­tain dis­taste­ful el­e­ments, who in many in­stances should know bet­ter, but are seem­ing­ly hell bent on tak­ing us down a very dark and dirty road, laden with vit­ri­ol, per­son­al at­tacks and neg­a­tiv­i­ty.

What makes this even worse is that this type of un­seem­ly be­hav­iour is what pass­es for “good pol­i­tics” and is now the norm we have come to ex­pect, both in and out of cam­paign sea­son.

In fact, it is of­ten felt that the nas­ti­er we can get the bet­ter.

In this con­text, we make ref­er­ence to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin’s an­nounce­ment on Tues­day that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has re­ceived cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence of a plot to desta­bilise Mon­day’s elec­tion process.

Giv­en the peace­ful con­duct of pre­vi­ous polling process­es in T&T’s 100-year elec­toral his­to­ry, the temp­ta­tion is there to dis­miss out-of-hand the TTPS’ claim. Af­ter all, this is not the first time it has made such a claim.

In 2018, at the height of Car­ni­val, there were sim­i­lar claims of a ter­ror­ist threat to the fes­tiv­i­ties to which the po­lice re­spond­ed by round­ing up those in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly in­volved be­fore they were all sub­se­quent­ly re­leased with­out charge.

In fact, just last week, the State was or­dered to pay one of those per­sons a tidy sum for the po­lice’s seem­ing in­dis­cre­tion on that oc­ca­sion. Need­less to say, pub­lic scep­ti­cism is high amid the lat­est re­port­ed threat.

Still, the TTPS’ warn­ing is suf­fi­cient for us to again urge the lead­ers of the 17 par­ties con­test­ing the April 28 elec­tion to tem­per their po­lit­i­cal rhetoric in these fi­nal days of the cam­paign.

In the heat of the bat­tle, it is easy to get car­ried away with the crowd, but pow­er comes with tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, mak­ing it in­cum­bent for Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in par­tic­u­lar to set the right tone and to en­sure that both their can­di­dates and sup­port­ers walk the right road, lest this coun­try de­scends in­to an­ar­chy.

We have al­ready seen enough videos of sup­port­ers go­ing at each oth­er and of elec­tion para­pher­na­lia be­ing de­stroyed to know that the horse has al­ready bolt­ed the prover­bial sta­ble.

With four days to go, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty there­fore for all con­cerned to en­sure that our na­tion­al record as a peace­ful coun­try which con­ducts free and fair elec­tions re­mains un­blem­ished.

It was for­mer South African Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela, now de­ceased, who af­fec­tion­ate­ly re­ferred to T&T as a “rain­bow coun­try” dur­ing a vis­it here in 2004.

We hope, there­fore, that all in­volved in this cur­rent cam­paign will do all with­in their pow­er to en­sure this sta­tus quo pre­vails.