As the coun­try en­ters an­oth­er elec­tion cy­cle, as­pects of T&T-style po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing are al­ready com­ing to the fore.

The main event, the gen­er­al elec­tion, might still be more than a year away but the fight for pow­er be­tween the PNM and the UNC, with oc­ca­sion­al in­ter­jec­tions from a hand­ful of small­er po­lit­i­cal play­ers, has been un­der­way for some time.

There is no need for of­fi­cial par­ty man­i­festos when a steady flow of day-to-day chal­lenges—wa­ter short­ages, di­lap­i­dat­ed roads, bro­ken bridges and that wet sea­son sta­ple, floods—pro­vide eas­i­ly avail­able talk­ing points for politi­cians ea­ger to re­main rel­e­vant and at­trac­tive to the elec­torate.

The prob­lem with these low-hang­ing fruits is that they dis­tract vot­ers and trap the na­tion in­to a cy­cle of po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed com­plaints, protests and re­spons­es that ham­per gen­uine de­vel­op­ment.

The lat­est ex­am­ple is Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin squab­bling over the wa­ter sup­ply sit­u­a­tion in Morne Di­a­blo, a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty where the cam­paign for a lo­cal gov­ern­ment by-elec­tion is in full swing.

Res­i­dents are just days away from vot­ing for a new coun­cil­lor to re­place the late Diptee Ram­nath in Quinam/Morne Di­a­blo.

Ide­al­ly, this by-elec­tion, tak­ing place just months af­ter lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, should be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to test the ef­fec­tive­ness of the new sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed af­ter those polls last year.

How­ev­er, an ex­am­i­na­tion of how goods and ser­vices are be­ing de­liv­ered to burgess­es at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el when prop­er­ly ex­plored in all its di­men­sions, does not pro­vide suf­fi­cient oc­ca­sions for the pi­cong and bac­cha­nal that dom­i­nates plat­form pol­i­tics in this coun­try.

On the oth­er hand, wa­ter, a pre­cious com­mod­i­ty too of­ten in short sup­ply and an avail­able trig­ger for pub­lic dis­con­tent, is an easy way to throw shade at po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

On this oc­ca­sion, how­ev­er, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t score the ex­pect­ed po­lit­i­cal points. Res­i­dents say there has been an im­prove­ment in their wa­ter sup­ply, so her dig at Min­is­ter Gon­za­les and at­tempt to high­light fail­ures in the wa­ter im­prove­ment pro­gramme in that com­mu­ni­ty fell flat.

The prob­lem is that the po­lit­i­cal tit-for-tat that has en­sued be­tween these two par­lia­men­tar­i­ans since then is dis­tract­ing from oth­er mat­ters af­fect­ing that rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, the types of is­sues that need to be care­ful­ly weighed by the res­i­dents be­fore they go in­to the vot­ing booth on June 17.

And so it is with many of the top­ics that dom­i­nate the po­lit­i­cal di­a­logue across this coun­try.

Cit­i­zens are con­tin­u­al­ly be­ing as­sailed and dis­tract­ed by emo­tive is­sues, crime be­ing a ma­jor one of course, and are not en­cour­aged to deeply ex­am­ine and chal­lenge the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion they are re­ceiv­ing com­pared to what is be­ing promised.

If this is an in­di­ca­tion of the qual­i­ty of the cam­paign­ing that will in­ten­si­fy as gen­er­al elec­tion time draws clos­er, the elec­torate doesn’t have much to look for­ward to.

The trou­ble with road, wa­ter and flood pol­i­tics is that it is in­flu­enced by three-year and five-year elec­toral cy­cles and dom­i­nat­ed by fleet­ing, usu­al­ly un­kept, promis­es that re­tard the coun­try’s ad­vance­ment and drain al­ready dwin­dling re­sources.

Po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties of every hue—red, yel­low, green and what­ev­er else ex­ists—are lured by it and un­will­ing to look at the more dif­fi­cult al­ter­na­tives. The po­lit­i­cal stakes are too high.

The biggest losers are cit­i­zens who are left with lim­it­ed choic­es.