An elec­tion cam­paign should not be an un­ruly con­test for pow­er but to a dis­turb­ing de­gree, the race to the April 28 polls has be­come just that, de­gen­er­at­ing in­to a fierce, no-holds-barred fight for pow­er.

Po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion ap­pears to be in­creas­ing and par­ty sup­port­ers are show­ing no tol­er­ance for dif­fer­ing view­points, so that in­sults, mud­sling­ing and fear­mon­ger­ing have be­come marked fea­tures of the var­i­ous par­ty plat­forms.

It is even worse on so­cial me­dia, where there is less re­straint than at in-per­son events, with racial and sex­u­al slurs, misog­y­nis­tic barbs and all kinds of de­mean­ing com­ments be­ing post­ed and shared.

With all that has been hap­pen­ing in just the last few weeks, there seems to be very lit­tle in­ter­est in main­tain­ing a healthy, func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy.

On Sat­ur­day night, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) Tabaquite can­di­date Sean Sobers used very undiplo­mat­ic lan­guage to de­scribe out­go­ing Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir. In fact, he called him a "po­lit­i­cal va­grant."

It was un­for­tu­nate and un­nec­es­sary for him to go that route while prais­ing the par­ty’s new can­di­date for the con­stituen­cy, Shiv­an­na Sam.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so showed poor form and seemed to be pro­mot­ing vi­o­lence when he told Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers to “bury” out­spo­ken UNC sup­port­er Jack Warn­er “in the Lopinot ceme­tery.”

In the cur­rent charged at­mos­phere of this cam­paign, these com­ments can­not be brushed off as harm­less po­lit­i­cal pi­cong, not when they could be en­cour­ag­ing very dis­turb­ing be­hav­iour by par­ty sup­port­ers.

Last week, a Trini­bad artiste was ar­rest­ed for al­leged­ly threat­en­ing to “hunt and tie strap” peo­ple who vot­ed for a par­tic­u­lar par­ty and the bill­board of one can­di­date was re­cent­ly van­dalised.

It is a dan­ger­ous thing when a po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent is re­gard­ed as an en­e­my rather than a fel­low cit­i­zen. This fail­ure to un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween an op­po­nent and an en­e­my is fu­elling po­lar­i­sa­tion in this al­ready sharply di­vid­ed so­ci­ety.

It should be pos­si­ble to re­spect­ful­ly chal­lenge poli­cies, val­ues and ideas, de­bat­ing and dis­agree­ing, while not negat­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy or char­ac­ter of the oth­er par­ty.

Po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion is the foun­da­tion of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance. It pro­vides space for dif­fer­ent view­points and al­ter­na­tives that can con­tribute to T&T’s ad­vance­ment.

How­ev­er, as is be­ing demon­strat­ed dai­ly in this elec­tion cam­paign, when con­flict and com­pe­ti­tion get out of con­trol, it can be de­struc­tive.

With just two weeks to go un­til elec­tion day, it is time for par­ties to turn down the heat and dis­man­tle this trend of in­tense par­ti­san an­i­mos­i­ty.

Po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and can­di­dates need to ac­knowl­edge that there are oth­er valid per­spec­tives on an is­sue and en­cour­age their sup­port­ers to do the same.

More fo­cus on build­ing cross-par­ti­san re­spect and show­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for dif­fer­ences in po­lit­i­cal and eth­i­cal be­liefs is al­so nec­es­sary to bring down the tem­per­a­ture in this heat­ed elec­tion sea­son.

The can­di­dates seek­ing po­lit­i­cal of­fice have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate that re­spect­ful dis­agree­ment is pos­si­ble. In the lim­it­ed ge­o­graph­ic space avail­able in T&T, it is es­sen­tial for peo­ple from dif­fer­ent bases of in­tel­lec­tu­al knowl­edge and tra­di­tions, who are aligned with dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ties, to peace­ful­ly co­ex­ist.

Ours is a po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry where colo­nial rule was re­placed with free elec­tions and peace­ful de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tions have been tak­ing place for decades.

T&T needs to choose po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives who un­der­stand their con­stituents, care about their con­cerns and can pro­vide so­lu­tions. Cam­paign­ing should help, not hin­der, that de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.