Politi­cians cam­paign­ing for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls are, un­for­tu­nate­ly, prepar­ing the ground for an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of racial dishar­mo­ny, even vi­o­lence. Hav­ing done so, they then seek to be holi­er than thou, and point ac­cus­ing fin­gers at their op­po­nents. If it did not have the po­ten­tial for cat­a­stro­phe, it would be fun­ny.

The flur­ry of com­plaints made to the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour on the spread of in­cen­di­ary lan­guage and imag­ing on the elec­tion plat­forms cap­tures well the na­ture of the pol­i­tics: it’s like an ab­surd farce, com­plete­ly at odds with the re­al­i­ty of the needs of con­stituents.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­light­ed in her gun talk and when up­braid­ed for her reck­less­ness with racial un­der­tones, dou­bled down with gang­ster lan­guage, feel­ing proud of her use of it. To en­sure his rul­ing par­ty is not left out of the fray, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was iden­ti­fied by the coun­cil for “false­ly and out­ra­geous­ly claim­ing that the UNC sent gun­men in­to the cap­i­tal city to shoot in high-traf­fic ar­eas to cause ter­ror.”

When made aware that his state­ments vi­o­lat­ed the Code of Ethics, PM Row­ley re­turned fire on the coun­cil. If the lead­ers have not seen the clip cir­cu­lat­ing on Face­book of In­do and Afro-Tri­nis con­flict­ing over the race and pol­i­tics co­nun­drum, they should, and then re­flect on the links to their be­hav­iours.

All the while, in­ten­tion­al or not, race bait­ing has en­croached in­to the cam­paigns, with the prospect for vi­o­lence. The ca­su­al­ty of it all, but for per­func­to­ry state­ments, is the ab­sence of dis­cus­sion and per­spec­tive on a strong and rel­e­vant lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem to meet the needs of com­mu­ni­ties.

A cor­rect as­sess­ment, with­out char­i­ty to the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and their lead­ers, is to con­clude that they have not brought in a suf­fi­cient and/or se­ri­ous man­ner of po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing to high­light the ba­sics of the new gov­ern­ing struc­ture for lo­cal gov­ern­ment to the ears of their sup­port­ers, and those stand­ing on the side­lines in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing in­volved.

What’s more, when the ap­proach­ing elec­tions re­quire a se­ri­ous fo­cus on is­sues which mean some­thing to peo­ple, par­ties adopt the ap­proach that the as­sured means of get­ting in­to of­fice is to ig­nite the sup­port of the trib­al group they iden­ti­fy with.

An­oth­er neg­a­tive im­pact of the scan­dal-laden and racial po­lit­i­cal ap­proach is its in­abil­i­ty to bring change and qual­i­ty gov­er­nance to the coun­try. In­stead, the ap­proach pro­motes con­tin­u­ing and in­creas­ing ir­rel­e­vance of pol­i­tics and po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing to achieve pos­i­tive change.

The cam­paign­ing al­so casts the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal fig­ures in a poor light. Elec­tors who are not im­pressed by the char­la­tan­ry of the par­ty pol­i­tics sim­ply tune out.

But all of the above and more do not let the cit­i­zens of this coun­try, which pro­ceed­ed to po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence 61 years ago, off the hook. The ma­jor rea­son why the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of race-bait­ing and threat­en­ing vi­o­lence is gain­ing ground is be­cause the elec­torate has al­lowed room for it to grow.

Those not blind­ed by par­ti­san pol­i­tics must be­come in­volved in a con­struc­tive man­ner to both change the ori­en­ta­tion of the par­ties they sup­port and to al­so be­gin look­ing for par­ties which will de­part from the tra­di­tion­al form of pol­i­tick­ing. In­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make the change.