As the gen­er­al elec­tion sea­son in­ten­si­fies, we, the mem­bers of this coun­try’s Fourth Es­tate, in all the tra­di­tion­al and new for­mats now avail­able, have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­ter­vene in a proac­tive man­ner on be­half of the cit­i­zen­ry.

The forth­com­ing process fore­casts to be one of the most gru­elling bat­tles amongst the two ma­jor par­ties, the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, along­side a host of oth­er par­ties seek­ing to prove their met­tle amongst the more es­tab­lished fron­trun­ners, for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to run the coun­try’s af­fairs for a five-year term.

How­ev­er, if T&T is to tru­ly ben­e­fit from the ex­er­cise ahead, a dif­fer­ent modus operan­di is need­ed.

In­deed, rather than be­ing mere con­duits for the par­ties’ agen­das, we must en­sure those con­tend­ing en­ti­ties con­duct mean­ing­ful cam­paigns that will cater to cit­i­zens’ re­al needs go­ing for­ward, rather than spew­ing the usu­al un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed mau­vais langue which has be­come the norm on plat­forms in re­cent years.

And we must do so whether the politi­cians and the par­ties like it or not. It must ul­ti­mate­ly be con­veyed to the par­ties that sling­ing in­sults, charges and dis­tor­tions to­wards each oth­er, as part of in­tim­ida­to­ry and con­trol­ling tac­tics, can no longer pass for elec­tion­eer­ing.

We are sug­gest­ing that the fo­cus of the par­ties must be on the is­sues and mat­ters which are of great con­se­quence to the na­tion and its cit­i­zens.

There must al­so be a crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of the claims to be made by the par­ties and their lead­ers and an ap­pli­ca­tion of sub­stan­tive analy­ses to them.

Jour­nal­ists and an­a­lysts should delve in­to such pro­jec­tions for re­al­i­ty checks and to in­ter­ro­gate whether the par­ties have the ca­pac­i­ty to con­vert gen­er­alised man­i­festo pro­pos­als in­to re­al­i­ty once in gov­ern­ment.

As part of this process, the me­dia must, for in­stance, ask Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about the projects and pro­grammes pre­vi­ous­ly promised. He must ac­count for whether those ef­forts were up to stan­dard, or why ini­tia­tives may not have been high­light­ed and im­ple­ment­ed, and how the much-talked-about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my is to be ad­vanced.

On the Op­po­si­tion side, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be made to ex­plain how she will dri­ve her five-year eco­nom­ic plan which promis­es to cut tax­es, while at the same time ini­ti­at­ing ad­di­tion­al so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes.

Es­sen­tial­ly, the ad­vo­ca­cy of this ed­i­to­r­i­al is re­al­ly for all le­git­i­mate me­dia to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they have come through his­to­ry with as their guid­ing prin­ci­ple - to in­form, to in­ves­ti­gate, to make clear the needs of the coun­try and to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine what the par­ties are putting for­ward to gain the sup­port of cit­i­zens.

To achieve many of the above-stat­ed agen­das, the me­dia has to de­vel­op the re­search ca­pac­i­ty with­in news­rooms, hold fast to the prin­ci­ples of fair­ness and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty to re­port and analyse and to avoid be­ing drawn in­to the use­less blame games of the par­ties.

The na­tion has heard suf­fi­cient­ly about “who tief” and bad de­ci­sions made by gov­ern­ments, yet no one is pay­ing the penal­ty for de­priv­ing cit­i­zens of re­sources to en­hance schools, to up­grade health­care ser­vices and most im­por­tant in the present, how the threat of crime is to be con­quered.

T&T can­not, how­ev­er, at­tain its true po­ten­tial if the po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­tin­ue on with busi­ness as usu­al.