Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is right - bul­ly­ing is a very se­ri­ous is­sue.

We al­so agree with him that it is a mat­ter that should nev­er be politi­cised. This is why the tim­ing of this week's vi­ral post on an in­ci­dent in which he was in­volved, as a teenag­er 33 years ago at St Mary's Col­lege, is very un­for­tu­nate.

That the post ap­peared just as Mr Young was be­ing sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter sug­gests it was a cal­cu­lat­ed, be­low-the-belt at­tempt to smear his im­age, since the sis­ter of the oth­er stu­dent in­volved could have just as eas­i­ly made the same post on any giv­en day for the past three decades, but wait­ed in­stead un­til Mon­day to do so.

This does not take away from the se­ri­ous­ness of the al­le­ga­tions of bul­ly­ing. But can a teenag­er be held to the same stan­dard as an adult?

Put more blunt­ly, if Prime Min­is­ter Young could have a con­ver­sa­tion with his younger self, what would he sug­gest should have been said or done dif­fer­ent­ly?

We would hope that the adult Young would have learnt from what he de­scribed yes­ter­day as a "trau­mat­ic" in­ci­dent for every­one con­cerned.

We al­so see the wis­dom in him break­ing his si­lence and ap­pear­ing to ad­dress the mat­ter frontal­ly af­ter it resur­faced this week on so­cial me­dia.

How­ev­er, af­ter all was said and done, we couldn’t help but feel the Prime Min­is­ter could have gone a step fur­ther to ei­ther apol­o­gise for his part in the in­ci­dent or to show re­morse over the fact that it oc­curred in the first place.

For us, the Prime Min­is­ter missed a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­nect at a more per­son­al lev­el with stu­dents — par­tic­u­lar­ly ado­les­cent males in our sec­ondary school sys­tem who are strug­gling with the tran­si­tion from boys to men.

He al­so ap­peared some­what dis­mis­sive and in­sen­si­tive when he sug­gest­ed in his Face­book post yes­ter­day that we all should just fo­cus on writ­ing the next chap­ter, with­out ful­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties that at­tain to the cur­rent chap­ter in which bul­ly­ing re­mains a cen­tral is­sue in our na­tion's schools.

Young must re­mem­ber that in a high­ly po­larised so­ci­ety in which ap­a­thy is high, char­ac­ter could make the dif­fer­ence on who ul­ti­mate­ly gets the man­date as prime min­is­ter.

Whichev­er way the elec­tion goes, how­ev­er, it is our fer­vent hope that this ug­ly start to the 2025 elec­tion cam­paign will not per­sist.

In­stead of mud­sling­ing and per­son­al at­tacks, this cam­paign needs to be fo­cused on the every­day is­sues cit­i­zens are fac­ing and the so­lu­tions.

In this re­gard, we are ea­ger to hear from all po­lit­i­cal par­ties over the next few weeks on how they in­tend to deal with the crime men­ace, the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, our forex chal­lenges, what plans are in store to safe­guard for the ed­u­ca­tion of the na­tion's young peo­ple, and to nav­i­gate dwin­dling nat­ur­al gas re­sources in the face of geopo­lit­i­cal changes.

Yes, we are in "sil­ly sea­son," but politi­cians must of ne­ces­si­ty raise the lev­el of na­tion­al dis­course above pet­ty and triv­ial ar­gu­ments with racial un­der­tones.

This year, as T&T marks 100 years since it start­ed hold­ing elec­tions, we must be able to demon­strate to the world that we have come a long way from our ear­ly ex­pe­ri­ences with seg­re­gat­ed pol­i­tics, with our politi­cians lead­ing the way in a dis­play of ma­tu­ri­ty as we pre­pare to go to the polls.