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.
