T&T’s pol­i­tics, al­though mod­elled af­ter Britain’s West­min­ster sys­tem of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy, has evolved to fea­ture the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics of pi­cong and mau­vais langue. On the cam­paign trail, those el­e­ments of Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture flavour the plat­form rhetoric of the var­i­ous par­ties, their po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and can­di­dates.

This is the dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­ment in which the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour func­tions as it holds the var­i­ous par­ties to the high­est stan­dards of truth, tol­er­ance and re­spect.

In get­ting that job done, the coun­cil has ruf­fled a few feath­ers, but their goal is not to win po­lit­i­cal friends but en­sure democ­ra­cy is pre­served.

Un­til now, how­ev­er, its ob­jec­tiv­i­ty has nev­er been ques­tioned, nor have its find­ings been chal­lenged.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in a sin­gle sen­tence post­ed on so­cial me­dia, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has lev­elled some se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against the coun­cil which could de­rail its very im­por­tant work.

The com­ments were made in a Face­book post one day af­ter the coun­cil is­sued a state­ment crit­i­cal of re­marks Dr Row­ley made in his ad­dress at a PNM ral­ly in San Fer­nan­do two Sat­ur­days ago.

It stirs up po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy at a crit­i­cal time, just over a fort­night be­fore Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions on Au­gust 14, di­vert­ing at­ten­tion away from the is­sues of re­form that should be high on the cam­paign agen­das of the var­i­ous par­ties.

Claims of bias, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­ing from the leader of one of the main par­ties fac­ing the polls, can un­der­mine the coun­cil’s ef­forts at fos­ter­ing democ­ra­cy and pro­mot­ing re­spect.

It should be point­ed out that Dr Row­ley’s PNM was among the par­ties that signed on vol­un­tar­i­ly and agreed to the elec­tion code of con­duct de­vel­oped when the coun­cil was es­tab­lished in 2014.

The coun­cil’s role as an in­de­pen­dent watch­dog in main­tain­ing truth­ful, pos­i­tive de­bate is need­ed more than ever now to counter the tox­ic dis­cours­es that are be­com­ing more fre­quent in T&T’s eth­ni­cal­ly di­vid­ed po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.

On­line ex­changes dri­ven by mal­ice and mis­in­for­ma­tion serve on­ly to su­per­charge po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion. With cam­paign­ing now in high gear, the coun­cil’s role in en­sur­ing par­ties avoid lan­guage and ac­tions that pro­mote hate, dis­re­spect, and racism takes on greater im­por­tance.

The key is­sues of this elec­tion can be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to vot­ers with­out the den­i­gra­tion and dis­re­spect that has been dis­played too of­ten on the cam­paign trail by var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties.

The mes­sage that needs to be re­in­forced—and this is a key role of the coun­cil—is that crit­i­cism of the poli­cies and pro­grammes of po­lit­i­cal ri­vals can be done with­out re­sort­ing to in­sult­ing words and be­hav­iour.

It is pos­si­ble to re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with the find­ings of the coun­cil.

It is al­so im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that this body’s key func­tion is to en­sure com­pli­ance with a code of eth­i­cal po­lit­i­cal con­duct drawn up by the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er rep­utable or­gan­i­sa­tions.

All po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and can­di­dates need to em­brace ci­vil­i­ty and em­pa­thy. Even in the cut and thrust of an elec­tion cam­paign, all must ad­here to sys­tems and prac­tices that pro­mote a healthy de­mo­c­ra­t­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

T&T’s democ­ra­cy is too im­por­tant to be squan­dered on the plat­form mau­vais langue that too many of our pol­i­tics seem to pre­fer over lev­el-head­ed, con­struc­tive dis­cus­sions.

That is why the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour must be al­lowed to do its work in an at­mos­phere that is free and fair.