Yvonne Ba­boolal

On Jan­u­ary 10, the lead­ers of the three main po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the race for con­trol of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will be made to sit down and calm­ly tell the coun­try how they are go­ing to run the As­sem­bly should they suc­ceed.

Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don of the PNM, Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Ash­worth Jack of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple, and Ho­choy Charles of the less­er known Plat­form of Truth will square off with­out the usu­al bac­cha­nal and pi­cong of the cam­paign trail, in a 90-minute de­bate at the Mag­dale­na Grand Ho­tel in Low­lands, To­ba­go.

The tele­vised de­bate, sim­i­lar to the re­cent US pres­i­den­tial de­bates, will be pro­duced by the Caribbean New Me­dia Group and fed 'live' to oth­er sta­tions from 8 pm.

A mem­ber of the To­ba­go me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty is ex­pect­ed to mod­er­ate the event, which is be­ing or­gan­ised by the T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion (TTDC), an in­de­pen­dent NGO set up by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

A TTDC re­lease yes­ter­day said the com­mis­sion in­vit­ed the lead­er­ship of the four po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the THA elec­tion to par­tic­i­pate in "THA Elec­tion 2013: The Lead­er­ship De­bate."

The Move­ment for De­vel­op­ment and Democ­ra­cy (MDD) led by pathol­o­gist Hughvon Des Vi­gnes was forced to pull out be­cause it did not meet the re­quire­ment of hold­ing a cer­tain num­ber of seats in the THA. "The main pur­pose is to give the par­ties the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press their views and present their plans out­side the cut and thrust and pi­cong of po­lit­i­cal meet­ings," Prof Rho­da Red­dock, one of the com­mis­sion­ers on the TTDC, told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, not­ing the strong ad­ver­sar­i­al news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments by po­lit­i­cal par­ties vy­ing for the THA.

"Now, there is too much of go­ing for the jugu­lar. You can dis­agree with­out cussing and fight­ing. You need ci­vil­i­ty. It's about putting for­ward their opin­ions in a calm man­ner. It's not about win­ning. We don't want to know who wins," Red­dock said, mak­ing men­tion of T&T's first-past-the-post West­min­ster elec­toral sys­tem.

An­oth­er rea­son for stag­ing in­sight­ful de­bates is a hope that the pub­lic's po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions can be in­flu­enced, Red­dock said.

"We're hop­ing to give peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make mean­ing­ful and in­formed po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions. It's a way of try­ing to shift the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture."

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists have re­peat­ed­ly said cit­i­zens gen­er­al­ly vote along eth­nic lines and that politi­cians of­ten play the emo­tion­al race card in their elec­tion cam­paigns.

"There is a core of race pol­i­tics you can't de­ny," Red­dock said.

"But I do think the so­ci­ety is be­com­ing more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and wants more out of gov­er­nance. I think there is al­ready a move­ment in this di­rec­tion."

Red­dock said it was not­ed at a me­dia launch last De­cem­ber that this was a very ex­cit­ing time in the his­to­ry of To­ba­go's pol­i­tics and the first de­bate for any elec­tion in the is­land.

The TTDC is be­ing as­sist­ed by a lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee chaired by Car­los Dil­lon, as­sis­tant hon­orary sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

"This de­bate is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for To­bag­o­ni­ans to make more ed­u­cat­ed de­ci­sions con­cern­ing the elec­tion of their po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship come Jan­u­ary 21," Dil­lon said at the launch.

"The de­bate is a step in the right di­rec­tion for the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of To­ba­go and that of our na­tion."

Chair­man of the TTDC An­drew Sab­ga, who spoke at the launch, said the com­mis­sion was seek­ing to up­hold its over­all man­date to strength­en the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by stag­ing de­bates on mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance to as­sist the elec­torate in mak­ing in­formed po­lit­i­cal choic­es.