Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

With just weeks to go be­fore To­ba­go’s Jan­u­ary 12 elec­tion, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says vot­ers re­main di­vid­ed on whether it is even worth turn­ing out to vote.

Ra­goonath said yes­ter­day, he is not con­fi­dent vot­er turnout will ex­ceed the 57 per cent record­ed at the last To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion, not­ing that mixed views among the elec­torate con­tin­ue to shape the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

“Some peo­ple say they wouldn’t waste time vot­ing be­cause one par­ty, two par­ties — same thing,” he said.

Oth­ers, how­ev­er, still be­lieve par­tic­i­pa­tion is nec­es­sary.

“There are oth­ers who would tell you, well, look, we need to con­tin­ue,” Ra­goonath said, adding that some vot­ers view the elec­tion as a broad­er civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“Oth­ers would say we need to make sure that we pro­tect our so­ci­ety,” he said.

Based on these per­spec­tives, Ra­goonath said he does not ex­pect a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in turnout.

“I’m not con­fi­dent that we’d have a high­er vot­er turnout than we had last time around,” he said, adding that turnout is like­ly to re­main around the same lev­el, “give or take an ad­di­tion­al two or three per cent.”

Ra­goonath al­so warned that while cam­paign ac­tiv­i­ty has been rel­a­tive­ly mut­ed so far, that is ex­pect­ed to change rapid­ly af­ter the Christ­mas pe­ri­od.

“My word on the ground, con­firmed as re­cent­ly as this morn­ing, is that come Jan­u­ary 2, things are go­ing to heat up — very, very quick­ly,” he said.

He cau­tioned that the short win­dow be­tween Jan­u­ary 2 and elec­tion day could be un­pre­dictable.

“So in that ten-day pe­ri­od be­tween Jan­u­ary 2 and Jan­u­ary 12, any­thing could hap­pen,” Ra­goonath said.

De­spite the an­tic­i­pat­ed late surge, he said po­lit­i­cal par­ties have so far failed to gen­er­ate strong cam­paign mo­men­tum.

“I don’t think the par­ties have gen­er­at­ed the kind of mo­men­tum that would take them in­to the elec­tion,” he said, sug­gest­ing the hol­i­day sea­son has con­tributed to the slow­down.

“We are in the hol­i­day sea­son and peo­ple are tak­en up with all sorts of oth­er things,” he added.

Ra­goonath was speak­ing af­ter the sign­ing of an elec­tion code of ethics in To­ba­go, aimed at pro­mot­ing in­tegri­ty and re­spon­si­ble con­duct dur­ing the cam­paign.

The agree­ment was signed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance. The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty and Uni­ty of the Peo­ple did not at­tend the sign­ing, and Ra­goonath said no ex­pla­na­tion was pro­vid­ed for their ab­sence.

“They gave none. They have not even re­spond­ed,” he said.

He ex­plained that the code is in­tend­ed to guide cam­paign be­hav­iour and re­duce con­duct that could un­der­mine the elec­toral process.

“This is a code which gov­erns the in­tegri­ty of the elec­toral process,” Ra­goonath said, adding that it seeks to raise eth­i­cal stan­dards dur­ing the con­test.

“It rais­es the stan­dards and the ethics that one would ex­pect an elec­toral con­test to up­hold,” he said.

Ra­goonath said the code is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant as cam­paign­ing in­ten­si­fies in the fi­nal days be­fore the elec­tion.

“They should at least at­tempt to up­hold some lev­el of re­spect and dig­ni­ty,” he said.