To­day, Pope Fran­cis will be laid to rest. As we in T&T pre­pare to go to the polls on Mon­day, let’s re­flect on his life, and on the val­ues that he, a true ser­vant-leader, es­poused. May he rest in eter­nal peace.

Vot­ing/ex­er­cis­ing our fran­chise con­tin­ues to be democ­ra­cy’s defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic and great­est strength. The cul­mi­na­tion of weeks/months of po­lit­i­cal strate­gis­ing, and cam­paign­ing, is about to reach its cli­max.

On March 21, the me­dia re­port­ed that 41 peo­ple had been ap­point­ed to serve as re­turn­ing of­fi­cers for the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. They re­ceived their writs of elec­tion from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, giv­ing them au­thor­i­ty to con­duct polls in their re­spec­tive elec­toral dis­tricts on be­half of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).

At the close of Reg­is­tra­tion on Fri­day, March 28, EBC Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis re­vealed that 1,154,708 peo­ple are reg­is­tered to vote in the elec­tion, based on a pre­lim­i­nary elec­toral list­ing.

One hun­dred and 61 can­di­dates are con­test­ing the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. Sev­en­teen po­lit­i­cal par­ties have field­ed can­di­dates. There are three in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates. What kind of val­ues does each one pos­sess? As one can imag­ine, vol­un­teers are mak­ing their fi­nal calls, work­ing through con­tact lists for one fi­nal get-out-the-vote ef­fort. And can­di­dates are en­sur­ing that they are present in the con­stituen­cy they hope to rep­re­sent, in a last-minute push to se­cure un­de­cid­ed vot­ers and to en­cour­age reg­is­tered vot­ers to cast their votes for them on Mon­day. These fi­nal hours bring a mix­ture of ex­haus­tion, anx­i­ety, and hope for can­di­dates and their teams.

Tele­vi­sion, ra­dio, and dig­i­tal plat­forms are sat­u­rat­ed with po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tise­ments, with a bar­rage of cam­paign mes­sages dur­ing com­mer­cial breaks. For the small­er par­ties, cam­paign fi­nance re­form is a for­lorn dream. The fi­nal push will in­clude even more pan­els of po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts dis­sect­ing po­ten­tial sce­nar­ios. Across the coun­try, cit­i­zens are mak­ing their plans for elec­tion day.

I ask lead­ers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, can­di­dates in the 41 con­stituen­cies and cit­i­zens in gen­er­al to re­mem­ber that, as is stat­ed in The Com­pendi­um on the So­cial Doc­trine of the Catholic Church: “the com­mon good is the rea­son that the po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ty ex­ists (355) … to en­sure the com­mon good, the gov­ern­ment of each coun­try has the spe­cif­ic du­ty to har­monise the dif­fer­ent sec­toral in­ter­ests with the re­quire­ments of jus­tice (358). The prop­er rec­on­cil­ing of the par­tic­u­lar goods of groups and those of in­di­vid­u­als is, in fact, one of the most del­i­cate tasks of pub­lic au­thor­i­ty.”

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, cit­i­zens want eth­i­cal lead­ers who will:

• ↓Gov­ern with in­tegri­ty—em­brac­ing hon­esty, fair­ness, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and trans­paren­cy.

• ↓Fol­low through on com­mit­ments,

• ↓Dis­trib­ute re­sources eq­ui­tably,

• ↓Make de­ci­sions that ben­e­fit the com­mu­ni­ty rather than spe­cial in­ter­ests on­ly,

• ↓Strive to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of all cit­i­zens, many of whom are on the mar­gins of our so­ci­ety, of­ten fac­ing ex­clu­sion and lack­ing full par­tic­i­pa­tion in so­ci­ety,

• ↓Pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment etc.

When cit­i­zens see ev­i­dence of cor­rup­tion or poli­cies that con­sis­tent­ly favour the al­ready priv­i­leged, trust in gov­ern­ment may erode. Ero­sion of trust makes it more dif­fi­cult to solve com­mon prob­lems. Our lead­ers must cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where trust can thrive. Com­mu­ni­ties in T&T will de­vel­op/flour­ish when ba­sic needs are met, op­por­tu­ni­ties are ac­ces­si­ble, and pub­lic re­sources are al­lo­cat­ed eq­ui­tably, ad­dress­ing gen­uine needs rather than re­ward­ing po­lit­i­cal al­lies.

As April 28 draws close, I ask each would-be politi­cian to re­flect on Pope Fran­cis’ “Beat­i­tudes of the Politi­cian,” pro­posed by Viet­namese Car­di­nal François-Xavier Nguyen Vãn Thuan, and in­clud­ed in Pope Fran­cis’ 2019 World Day of Peace Ad­dress:

“Blessed be the politi­cian with a lofty sense and deep un­der­stand­ing of his role.

Blessed be the politi­cian who per­son­al­ly ex­em­pli­fies cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Blessed be the politi­cian who works for the com­mon good and not his or her own in­ter­est.

Blessed be the politi­cian who re­mains con­sis­tent.

Blessed be the politi­cian who works for uni­ty.

Blessed be the politi­cian who works to ac­com­plish rad­i­cal change.

Blessed be the politi­cian who is ca­pa­ble of lis­ten­ing.

Blessed be the politi­cian who is with­out fear.”

In his 2020 en­cycli­cal, Fratel­li Tut­ti, on fra­ter­ni­ty and so­cial friend­ship, Pope Fran­cis called for a pol­i­tics of love. Let’s rid our pol­i­tics of mud­sling­ing, char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion, etc, and em­brace a pol­i­tics of love. Elec­tions can be di­vi­sive times, with strong emo­tions and deep dis­agree­ments. How­ev­er, we know that af­ter elec­tions, re­gard­less of the out­come or our po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, we all need to find ways to live and work to­geth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty and a coun­try. Let’s find com­mon ground, show re­spect for dif­fer­ent view­points, and fo­cus on con­struc­tive di­a­logue, as we work to­geth­er to build a vi­brant, in­clu­sive democ­ra­cy.