The Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign is “heat­ing up de place” as the DJs pound­ing their so­ca like to say; and it tru­ly is. The par­ties and their lead­ers who sit on the dif­fer­ent sides of the racial di­vide al­ways find it nec­es­sary, per­haps when they think their par­ties are lag­ging be­hind, to pull out the tried, test­ed and proven race card.

Their hope and ex­pec­ta­tion are that re­liance on trib­al al­le­giances will get them over the line when all else is fail­ing in con­stituen­cies where the eth­nic pop­u­la­tion is di­vid­ed, the so-called “mar­gin­als.”

In ad­di­tion, the ma­jor par­ties turn to some­thing of a “bomb” dis­clo­sure to make the dif­fer­ence. Some­one dis­cov­ers and res­ur­rects an al­leged deed of an in­di­vid­ual and or par­ty; a spec­tac­u­lar arrange­ment be­ing re­port­ed­ly made by one par­ty or the oth­er which will throw the coun­try in­to tur­moil; a long-for­got­ten, and or re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered ne­far­i­ous act of a ma­jor politi­cian. These are all tossed out in­to the are­na for con­tention; if not rel­e­vance.

Along with all that and more, the use of the tele­vi­sion medi­um to bring the par­ties' cam­paigns in­to the liv­ing rooms of po­ten­tial vot­ers has been spec­tac­u­lar in the colours red and yel­low. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for the small­er par­ties with­out the fi­nances to af­ford prime-time tele­vi­sion and ra­dio, they have to set­tle for small road­side and cot­tage meet­ings.

What the above does is once again un­der­line the is­sue of dol­lars and cents and large cor­po­ra­tions and in­di­vid­u­als with deep pock­ets hav­ing an un­due in­flu­ence on the for­ma­tion of a gov­ern­ment and the op­er­a­tions there­after.

Through­out more than five gen­er­al elec­tions, the call for cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late fi­nan­cial gifts to par­ties has been ac­knowl­edged with­out an ad­vance to the fash­ion­ing of le­gal bound­aries. Al­most need­less to say, the par­ties, to the dis­trac­tion of the elec­torate, then beat each oth­er over the heads with claims of par­ties be­ing bought out.

Be­fore the eyes of the world to­day are the in­flu­ence and con­se­quences of the hold that large cor­po­ra­tions and su­per-wealthy in­di­vid­u­als are hav­ing on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.

What the present T&T elec­tion cam­paign needs is the re­duc­tion, even elim­i­na­tion, of the spread of in­con­se­quen­tial mat­ters which will have lit­tle bear­ing on what hap­pens the morn­ing af­ter the elec­tion.

The Sun­day edi­tion of this news­pa­per car­ried sto­ries about the state of the econ­o­my, the debt trap that the coun­try is slid­ing in­to, the well-known for­eign ex­change short­ages, and the ever-deep­en­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty that per­vades the so­ci­ety and makes it all but im­pos­si­ble for peace­ful and pro­duc­tive liv­ing.

All of these is­sues are left un­at­tend­ed while the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and their par­ties make mer­ry with base­less al­le­ga­tions and wild promis­es.

It is still pos­si­ble, even at this point of elec­tion cam­paign­ing, for there to be a cit­i­zen in­ter­ven­tion to force the po­lit­i­cal par­ties to re-fo­cus their cam­paigns on the re­al­i­ty of the coun­try’s con­di­tion and the so­lu­tions need­ed to fix the prob­lems. The ques­tion is whether cit­i­zens will spark such a dri­ve to dig the coun­try out of the cam­paign­ing trap.