Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Chair­man of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says po­lit­i­cal par­ties have adopt­ed a more re­spect­ful tone in their plat­form speech­es com­pared to pre­vi­ous elec­tion cy­cles. How­ev­er, the Coun­cil is con­cerned about re­ports of van­dal­ism on the cam­paign trail.

“We not­ed, to a large ex­tent, that this elec­tion cam­paign has been clean­er than the past in terms of what was said on the plat­form, the ground cam­paign is a dif­fer­ent thing al­to­geth­er. There have been laps­es but they have been in the form of lan­guage, then there is the van­dal­ism that we have to talk about,” he said.

Dr Ra­goonath said mem­bers of the Coun­cil have been as­sess­ing the cam­paign and will re­lease a de­tailed re­port on its find­ings. A snap­shot of the da­ta point­ed to con­cerns about the use of deroga­to­ry lan­guage among oth­er in­frac­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had raised con­cerns about the sus­pect­ed align­ment of op­po­si­tion par­ty sup­port­ers with crim­i­nals and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the PNM of run­ning an in­sult­ing, neg­a­tive and abu­sive cam­paign.

Last week, ban­ners and posters of the PNM and UUNC can­di­dates in the mar­gin­al Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy were van­dalised.

The UNC’s can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin called for a clean cam­paign, while the PNM’s can­di­date, Lisa At­wa­ter con­demned the be­hav­iour and called for po­lit­i­cal ma­te­r­i­al to be re­spect­ed. 

PNM can­di­date for Cu­mu­to/ Man­zanil­la San­jiv Bood­hu al­so con­demned al­leged clash­es on the cam­paign trail and claimed mem­bers of the UNC had been hurl­ing in­sults at PNM sup­port­ers.

New­ly in­stalled CEO of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) Kurleigh Prescod said the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem has not de­tect­ed breach­es by po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

“So far dur­ing this cam­paign pe­ri­od there has not been any par­tic­u­lar ad or cam­paign event that would have been brought to our at­ten­tion in terms of be­ing in breach of any of the broad­cast re­quire­ments or con­di­tions that we have in place,” he said.

“We al­so re­spond to com­plaints so if we get a com­plaint about a par­tic­u­lar cam­paign event which hap­pened a cou­ple of days ago, we are able to go to our broad­cast mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem and re­trieve that cam­paign and lis­ten to the con­tent to en­sure they stay with­in what is ex­pect­ed. To date, we haven’t had any ma­jor com­plaints.”