Now that the date for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions has been an­nounced, in the lead-up to the Au­gust 14 poll, we are hope­ful of much more than the usu­al mud­sling­ing and char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion that has come to char­ac­ter­ize our re­cent cam­paigns.

In fact, our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers would do well to heed the call of an en­light­ened elec­torate for more sub­stance than lev­i­ty and to run clean and pro­fes­sion­al cam­paigns in the weeks ahead.

While Trin­bag­o­ni­ans love our fair share of ole talk, giv­en the times we live in and the ob­vi­ous chal­lenges con­fronting the or­di­nary man in the street, it is clear that more mean­ing­ful ac­tion from our politi­cians must be the or­der of the day.

No mat­ter the top­ic of dis­cus­sion, the un­de­ni­able de­sire of the pop­u­lace is for cre­ative and work­able so­lu­tions to be found to re­cur­ring gov­er­nance is­sues. We are, there­fore, tired of the sweet-talk­ing, sec­ond-rate, mediocre can­di­dates with warmed-over, in­ef­fec­tive ideas who are sim­ply wast­ing time on the plat­forms.

In this re­gard, it is note­wor­thy that yes­ter­day’s elec­tion an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was not made in any dra­mat­ic fash­ion on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, but rather in a to-the-point press re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

As the cam­paign pro­gress­es, it will be in­ter­est­ing to see what oth­er tac­tics are em­ployed not on­ly by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment but the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and the oth­er con­tenders, new and not so new, seek­ing to win the hearts and minds of vot­ers.

Com­ing on the heels of the now in­fa­mous ‘leaked au­dio tape out of To­ba­go’, about which we have still heard noth­ing from the usu­al­ly out­spo­ken Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, but which re­ceived strong con­dem­na­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er stake­hold­ers, we would urge Dr Row­ley to en­sure he and his par­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives not on­ly ‘talk the talk’ but ‘walk the walk’ in terms of en­sur­ing their cam­paign meets a high-qual­i­ty thresh­old.

Put more force­ful­ly, there should be no rea­son for con­cern, as is the case in To­ba­go at present, that tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey could be used to fund pro­pa­gan­da ma­chin­ery in sup­port of the PNM’s par­ti­san elec­tion mis­sion.

Equal­ly, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for whom there is just as much at stake in this LGE, giv­en the cur­rent 7-7 tie in the cor­po­ra­tions, must as­sure this coun­try that she and her UNC will rise above the po­lit­i­cal gut­ter and that all par­ty broad­casts will nev­er again de­scend to the lev­el which forced the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and Ra­dio and TV Jaagri­ti to step in re­cent­ly to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion from the bark of MP Bar­ry Padarath.

We would have hoped that by now too, that Mr Padarath would have learnt pol­i­tics does not need to be a dead­ly blood sport.

And cer­tain­ly, with more than enough blame to share be­tween the PNM and UNC for the dys­func­tion­al and in­ef­fec­tive el­e­ments of our gov­er­nance sys­tem, as ev­i­denced by bad roads, in­ad­e­quate drainage, and poor com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture, not to men­tion wastage and bad spend­ing, our hope is that they will fo­cus over the next two months on re­al so­lu­tions to cit­i­zens’ is­sues and al­so present them­selves as peo­ple com­mit­ted to mean­ing­ful change and wor­thy of cit­i­zens’ votes.