From Fri­day to Sun­day evening, the elec­tion cam­paign pace will be at a hec­tic, par­ti­san fren­zy.

Par­ty cam­paign stal­warts in cen­tralised and con­stituen­cy cen­tres; on tele­phones, on so­cial me­dia and in the field, will be do­ing what­ev­er they can to get peo­ple mo­ti­vat­ed and out on elec­tion day. They hope to achieve this by a com­bi­na­tion of stim­u­la­tion of spon­ta­neous en­thu­si­asm and or­gan­ised ef­fort, to con­vince peo­ple to cast their vote for their can­di­date and par­ty next Mon­day. And the ads will be run­ning.

As of now, five days be­fore elec­tion, vot­er in­ter­est is there, but in­fec­tious par­ty en­er­gy is on the low­er end. Ex­cept for the de­cid­ed­ly par­ti­san, many vot­ers seem un­sure of what to think and do.

The first choice is whether to vote at all. This will af­fect turnout at the polls. A high vot­er turnout re­flects faith in the elec­toral and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es and helps to le­git­imise the out­come. A very low turnout means peo­ple are tired, fed up, burnt out, and do not think well of can­di­dates and par­ties. Some­times it can mean they are not in­vest­ed in the out­come be­cause they do not think it will make a dif­fer­ence to the things that mat­ter in their lives. Both ma­jor par­ties have spo­ken of vot­er sup­pres­sion and have been pulling out all stops to urge sup­port­ers to vote. This means they have some sense of re­al­i­ty on the ground.

It is pos­si­ble that how well par­ties have grasped the chal­lenges the elec­torate iden­ti­fies as im­por­tant, how well they have put these across, and how cred­i­ble or con­vinc­ing their ar­tic­u­lat­ed so­lu­tions have been, can make a dif­fer­ence to en­thu­si­asm in their favour.

I can­not tell for in­stance, whether the crime is­sue has been ef­fec­tive­ly dealt with from the vot­ers’ point of view. Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany’s poll re­veals cit­i­zens do not feel the State of Emer­gency was ef­fec­tive. Which means cit­i­zens do not feel safer or bet­ter pro­tect­ed.

What then, would con­vince peo­ple that a par­ty in gov­ern­ment will im­prove their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty? Is it a new Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty? Is it a Min­istry of Ef­fi­cien­cy? Is it to split the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, with one arm hav­ing a Home Af­fairs fo­cus? Is it giv­ing out li­cenced guns to de­serv­ing cit­i­zens? Is it a tar­get­ed as­sault on the gang and crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion cul­ture?

A com­pre­hen­sive an­swer to this on the plat­forms has not been clear.

I don’t think any par­ty has said they will ad­dress cor­rup­tion and com­plic­i­ty in the po­lice, mil­i­tary and prison ser­vice - a pre­cur­sor for law-and-or­der ef­fec­tive­ness. Has there been any com­mit­ment to launch an all-out as­sault on gangs and the gang cul­ture; re­or­gan­ise po­lice pres­ence for cit­i­zen safe­ty and pro­tec­tion in com­mu­ni­ties, di­vi­sion by di­vi­sion and po­lice sta­tion by po­lice sta­tion to deal with the now? What about the con­nec­tion of this to a longer term, co­her­ent plan for law, or­der, jus­tice, fair play, cit­i­zen pro­tec­tion, safe­ty and peace in T&T, based on a leg­isla­tive agen­da and sys­temwide re­form? On this lat­ter is­sue, the UNC has put for­ward some ideas.

How are we go­ing to deal with the fi­nanc­ing prob­lem for the coun­try - which is a straight ques­tion of re­duced rev­enue un­able to meet ex­pen­di­ture be­cause of low­er pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas and oil? How will any gov­ern­ment ad­dress the rais­ing of rev­enue? What ex­pen­di­ture will gov­ern­ment choose to cut and why? Will there be fall­out and how will that be dealt with? The PNM has put for­ward some rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mea­sures.

It is true that waste, cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment, ef­fec­tive­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dealt with, can re­sult in sav­ings. And the UNC has spo­ken of re­vert­ing to stronger pro­cure­ment law. But that will not solve our forex rev­enue prob­lem, which is the re­sult of low­er en­er­gy rev­enues, bal­ance of trade is­sues, lim­it­ed ex­port ca­pac­i­ty and achieve­ment, and lit­tle in­vest­ment linked to new, non-en­er­gy ex­port growth. Has the ques­tion of the mount­ing debt and debt ser­vic­ing de­mands, some in forex, come up mean­ing­ful­ly in the cam­paign at all?

Is the elec­torate con­vinced ei­ther par­ty has a han­dle on this and truth­ful­ly ad­dressed the need for man­age­ment of a tran­si­tion?

And with Drag­on and Man­a­tee in lim­bo, un­til some point of pos­si­ble res­o­lu­tion, how will we now, against this back­ground, fast-track di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, self-suf­fi­cien­cy and eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty based on a me­thod­i­cal, im­ple­mentable plan of re­cov­ery? Both par­ties have spo­ken on some of this but are peo­ple con­vinced?

The elec­tion turnout, out­come, mar­gin of vic­to­ry, and im­pact of split votes will prob­a­bly let us all know what peo­ple re­al­ly think and feel.