In many re­spects, yes­ter­day's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions were an his­toric event in the po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of this small na­tion state, which op­er­ates un­der a mod­i­fied West­min­ster sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day was the first time that the date of elec­tions in Trinidad or To­ba­go was in­flu­enced by a judg­ment of the Privy Coun­cil, which over­turned rul­ings of T&T's High Court and Court of Ap­peal by a three to two ma­jor­i­ty on May 18, 2023.

In ef­fect, the Privy Coun­cil's judg­ment, by the slimmest ma­jor­i­ty pos­si­ble, scup­pered the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to ex­tend the term of of­fice of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies from three years to four years.

Yes­ter­day's poll was al­so his­toric be­cause it was the first to be held un­der a sys­tem that en­vis­aged lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies should be part­ly fund­ed by res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax­es raised from res­i­dents of re­gion­al or bor­ough cor­po­ra­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment's con­cept of plac­ing greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the man­age­ment of lo­cal gov­ern­ment ar­eas in the hands of elect­ed and nom­i­nat­ed of­fi­cials—and al­low­ing those of­fi­cials to raise funds from res­i­dents—is a pro­gres­sive, worth­while and im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment.

To a sig­nif­i­cant ex­tent, the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment made its re­forms of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem the cen­tral plank of its cam­paign.

But if the Gov­ern­ment be­lieves in its mod­el of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, it must be res­olute in im­ple­ment­ing the res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax and en­sur­ing that the mon­ey does, in fact, flow to all the bod­ies, even those con­trolled by the Op­po­si­tion.

The 68-day cam­paign al­so cre­at­ed his­to­ry in a sense. It in­volved a record ten par­ties and was un­ques­tion­ably the most vit­ri­olic and vi­cious lo­cal cam­paign in the post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry of T&T.

It was al­so the first time the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, which was formed in March 2015, found that the lan­guage used by both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was "in­ap­pro­pri­ate and in­sen­si­tive."

Both lead­ers were found to have breached the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct. That Code was de­vel­oped in 2014 by civ­il so­ci­ety and sub­se­quent­ly en­dorsed by all par­ties con­test­ing the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, in­clud­ing the PNM and UNC.

The as­pect of the code both lead­ers were found to have breached was the ‘Pro­hib­it­ed Con­duct’ sec­tion, which in­cludes not us­ing lan­guage to "pro­voke vi­o­lence... or in­vite, en­cour­age or fos­ter ha­tred, re­sent­ment or any form of vi­o­lence."

The coun­cil opined: "...In the con­text of a so­ci­ety be­sieged with crime and vi­o­lence, the lan­guage used on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms should be tem­pered to re­duce so­ci­etal vi­o­lence."

If there is one les­son that this coun­try must learn com­ing out of the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, it is that the use of lan­guage that pro­vokes vi­o­lence by po­lit­i­cal lead­ers is in­tol­er­a­ble.

Thank­ful­ly, de­spite the lan­guage used in the cam­paign, the elec­tion process is re­port­ed to have run smooth­ly and gen­er­al­ly the elec­tion was free and fair and free from fear.

How­ev­er, as the coun­try moves for­ward from to­day, it is this me­dia house's hope that all par­ties will adopt a more tem­pered ap­proach to cam­paign­ing head­ing in­to the next gen­er­al elec­tions in 2025.

In this re­gard, the tone tak­en by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine dur­ing the launch of his new To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty (TPP) on Sun­day is a bit dis­turb­ing. This is be­cause Au­gus­tine too played on the emo­tions of To­bag­o­ni­ans by play­ing out a "them ver­sus we" sce­nario - which cer­tain­ly can­not bode well for the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the is­lands go­ing for­ward.