In the space of one week, three things hap­pened in the world’s most in­flu­en­tial na­tion – (i) it crossed the grim land­mark of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths; (ii) na­tion­wide un­rest erupt­ed over the killing of George Floyd and (iii); it sent two men in­to space for the first time in al­most a decade.

Nor­mal­ly, the lat­ter would have served as a bit of a dis­trac­tion from the rest, but these are not nor­mal times in Amer­i­ca and the sig­nif­i­cance of Sat­ur­day’s event wasn’t enough for cel­e­bra­tion in light of the oth­er two tragedies.

Sit­ting at the top, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump might have used these crises as op­por­tu­ni­ties to dis­play strong lead­er­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an elec­tion year. In­stead, his re­spons­es have been large­ly po­lit­i­cal and of­ten di­vi­sive, crit­i­cis­ing and blam­ing op­po­nents while sug­gest­ing force against Floyd pro­tes­tors.

We in T&T can learn from this.

While it’s not for us to de­ter­mine Trump’s fu­ture in the White House, with elec­tions al­so due this year amid an eco­nom­ic cri­sis and un­cer­tain fu­ture, prop­er lead­er­ship is no less im­por­tant to us now as it is there.

And we need not look be­yond the last few weeks to ask our­selves if the op­tions pre­sent­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion are best for the coun­try.

The Gov­ern­ment was wide­ly ap­plaud­ed for its han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic but some­how found a way to cre­ate mis­trust and doubt with Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez's vis­it and the T&T-Aru­ba fu­el deal. More­over, the be­hav­iour of those in Cab­i­net, through whom clar­i­fi­ca­tion was sought, has done lit­tle to help the Gov­ern­ment’s cred­i­bil­i­ty.

On the oth­er hand, many have ques­tioned the mo­tive of Op­po­si­tion mem­bers in ad­dress­ing the same is­sues. They’ve been ac­cused of de­lib­er­ate­ly try­ing to get T&T slapped with a sanc­tion, if on­ly to raise their sta­tus as a bet­ter al­ter­na­tive.

Nei­ther ac­tions are what right-think­ing cit­i­zens see as prop­er lead­er­ship.

And frankly, with very lit­tle on of­fer as a third force, the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader have gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ties in this elec­tion sea­son to right their wrongs by set­ting the right tone as prospec­tive lead­ers wor­thy of tak­ing T&T for­ward.

Now is not the time for pol­i­tics of lies, half-truths, in­nu­en­does and scan­dal. Those fight­ing to main­tain them­selves and their fam­i­lies af­ter los­ing their jobs due to the COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures care no more about who “buss the best mark” than they care about who is ly­ing or telling the truth.

In this un­prece­dent­ed era, our lead­ers will be judged on what they are of­fer­ing to a suf­fer­ing na­tion. Our lead­ers must thus lift them­selves above the pol­i­tics of bac­cha­nal, dis­trust and scan­dal and see T&T as the ground sees it - our home. They must of­fer prop­er plans, not just prop­er pol­i­tick­ing. They must of­fer good care, not just good cam­paign­ing.

Let's learn the les­son from our neigh­bours up north and not be left point­ing to a rock­et in the sky, while the ground burns be­low.