As the cam­paign for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE) heats up, a clear di­vid­ing line has al­ready been drawn be­tween the two ma­jor par­ties in terms of the is­sues they deem to be most im­por­tant to the peo­ple.

While Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­sists that the sin­gu­lar is­sue for him and his Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, not sur­pris­ing­ly, his chief op­po­nent and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is of a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent view.

Ad­dress­ing the launch of the UNC’s LGE cam­paign and pre­sen­ta­tion of can­di­dates on Mon­day night, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar made it clear they in­tend to fight the elec­tion on peo­ple is­sues, not poli­cies.

In fact, she re­mind­ed her au­di­ence that just mo­ments af­ter she was sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter on May 26, 2010, her first du­ty back then was to don boots and head out to flood-strick­en com­mu­ni­ties fol­low­ing heavy rain­fall that had af­fect­ed thou­sands.

As sea­soned politi­cians, both lead­ers are well aware that as good as ideals and cam­paign in­ten­tions are, what mat­ters most is the abil­i­ty to read the ground and re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly.

The PNM un­doubt­ed­ly has some work to do to con­vince vot­ers that the plans con­tained in the draft lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form pol­i­cy are the most im­por­tant rea­son for them to cast their votes.

As well thought out as the pol­i­cy may be, the el­e­ments con­tained there­in are not as wide­ly known as the PNM ap­pears to be­lieve.

There­fore, if the par­ty hopes to get vot­ers to see lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form as the most promi­nent is­sue be­fore them to­day, it must move swift­ly to en­sure those they are tar­get­ing are well-ed­u­cat­ed on its plans.

It is of­ten eas­i­er for peo­ple to ac­knowl­edge the prob­lems that are be­fore them than to ap­pre­ci­ate the so­lu­tions promised.

And this is where the UNC may gain one-up­man­ship.

Part of the UNC’s strat­e­gy is to high­light that the PNM, as the cur­rent cus­to­di­an of na­tion­al re­sources, has failed to ad­dress the is­sues that mat­ter the most.

Yes­ter­day’s floods across T&T came as a strong re­minder to us all that there is much on the ground that needs fix­ing.

Among the ar­eas bad­ly af­fect­ed was Mar­aval, a strong­hold of the PNM-con­trolled Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

The de­bate, there­fore, cen­tres on how the par­ty could con­vince oth­ers whose votes they seek, that they could fix this prob­lem else­where when the par­ty can­not get it right with­in the com­mu­ni­ties it cur­rent­ly con­trols.

Com­ing this soon at the start of the wet sea­son with an uptick of trop­i­cal waves, de­pres­sions, and storms in the fore­cast, it’s rea­son­able to ex­pect that the types of down­pours we ex­pe­ri­enced yes­ter­day will con­tin­ue or even wors­en.

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives who put em­pha­sis on so­lu­tions to flood­ing are, there­fore, like­ly to gain mo­men­tum over the next six weeks of cam­paign­ing.

The chal­lenges thou­sands faced as a re­sult of yes­ter­day’s show­ers pre­sent­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment can­di­dates with op­por­tu­ni­ties to demon­strate their com­mit­ment to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.

The ex­tent of their ded­i­ca­tion will be weighed in the bal­ance on Au­gust 14.

Poli­cies and for­ward-think­ing re­forms are crit­i­cal to a na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment but must be matched by a demon­stra­ble com­mit­ment to peo­ple when it tru­ly mat­ters.