The Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion needs to be treat­ed with the se­ri­ous­ness it de­serves–but not more. It is threat­en­ing to be­come a dis­trac­tion from nu­mer­ous oth­er more se­ri­ous is­sues.That may be due to the larg­er-than-life per­son­al­i­ty of the man whose ac­tions trig­gered the by-elec­tion, the con­stituen­cy's re­cent­ly re­signed MP, Austin "Jack" Warn­er.Mr Warn­er's bid to be the rul­ing par­ty's can­di­date has been at­tract­ing a great deal of at­ten­tion.

How­ev­er, the mat­ter needs to be put in­to prop­er per­spec­tive. As dra­mat­ic as are the cir­cum­stances in this by-elec­tion–which will be called af­ter the seat is de­clared va­cant at to­day's sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives–it is not like­ly to dra­mat­i­cal­ly shift the bal­ance of pow­er in this coun­try. Ch­agua­nas West, a UNC strong­hold, is just one seat out of 41 and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship holds enough of a ma­jor­i­ty to en­sure that, win or lose, the rul­ing coali­tion will still have a sig­nif­i­cant par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty at the end of the ex­er­cise.

In 2010, there were 25,715 reg­is­tered vot­ers in Ch­agua­nas West and 20,281 of them cast their bal­lots.Mr Warn­er, the can­di­date for the UNC, scored a land­slide win, get­ting 18,767 votes to the 1,471 cast for PNM can­di­date Ronald Heera.

In keep­ing with the best de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tions, it should be left to the peo­ple of the con­stituen­cy to de­cide whether they will con­sid­er their own per­son­al in­ter­ests and vote for a can­di­date with deep pock­ets who can do things for them, or con­sid­er the wider pic­ture and take in­to ac­count the rea­sons Mr Warn­er had to step down from his gov­ern­ment, par­ty and par­lia­men­tary po­si­tions.

Of great in­ter­est is whether he will be the UNC's can­di­date, or face the elec­torate as an in­de­pen­dent and risk be­ing ex­pelled from the par­ty in which he claims to be a life­time mem­ber.It will be in­ter­est­ing, too, to see whether the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituents will vote for a can­di­date or, as has al­ways been the pat­tern in the past, a par­ty.The COP has al­ready bowed out, as it seems to have been tak­en for grant­ed that the UNC would put up a PP can­di­date.

Was there any dis­cus­sion, though? How are those de­ci­sions made and does the COP have any say in them?The PNM seems to be tak­ing for grant­ed that it will lose and is show­ing no sign of in­ter­est in the by-elec­tion as yet. Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, the MSJ has al­ready backed out too.Still, there is room from oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties to get in­to this race.What about the small­er par­ties?A vi­brant, healthy democ­ra­cy needs vig­or­ous de­bate, choic­es and al­ter­na­tive views.

To make that pos­si­ble, there must be full par­tic­i­pa­tion by a wide range of can­di­dates rep­re­sent­ing di­verse po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests and ide­olo­gies.Even as the con­stituen­cy mo­bilis­es for this by-elec­tion, this should not be al­lowed to de­rail or post­pone the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions due lat­er this year–an even more im­por­tant ex­er­cise which has not tak­en place as reg­u­lar­ly as it should and rarely re­ceives the at­ten­tion it war­rants.