IS it too much or too early to ask our political leaders to begin to take the necessary action to bring some measure of dignity and wholesomeness to the campaign for this year’s general elections?
We appeal to the leaders of the three political parties to each take a step forward, lead by example and begin placing the election campaign on a higher plain of civility and enlightenment that will redound to the benefit of those who they will be appealing to over the next few months.
The more we listen to our politicians, the more we are convinced that most of them have no respect for the people of this country. In an age when more of us are graduating from universities and colleges and returning home presumably better equipped academically, then entering the political arena with the intention of contributing to national development, it is most regrettable that the level of public political discourse in St Lucia is so abysmally poor and consistently void of substance.
Politicians do not seem to get it: that the people are fed up with their foolishness, especially what is being delivered from the public platforms. People who are suffering—and let there be no mistake about it, that there is a lot of suffering in St Lucia—want to know what plans are being proposed to give them a chance and make conditions better. If they are disappointed and fed up with the party in power, they want to know what the others bidding to replace it are offering to better their lot.
Instead, what we mostly get from the platforms is a lot of glib talk, personal abuse, hatred, wild threats, insults, provocation, irrelevant arguments all of which combine to produce substandard entertainment, but very little by way of upliftment and enlightenment of the electorate to give a sense of hope and expectation.
Political campaign at election time is akin to marketing and promotion in business where contending parties try to sell a product with a positive and persuasive message and convince the consumer to buy. Put simply, it is a communication process. How do you expect to make a sale when the only pitch that you have is to berate your competitor’s product while failing to advance the attributes of your own?
Despite all the bravado and chest beating we hear from our parties, there seems to be a serious lack of imagination and professional planning that goes into election campaigns. The emphasis seems to be on spectacle and hype rather than content and substance. It is because of these deficiencies that there is so much garbage coming from the parties. What’s the point, if after spending all your millions in a campaign, you cannot even persuade your supporters to come out on election day to vote, as is currently the experience throughout the Caribbean?
Already there are suggestions being advanced for political debates and for a code of conduct to guide campaigning. Debates are a good idea and may have the effect of fleshing out some of what platform speeches should be addressing in terms of what the parties feel on issues and what their plans are; but given the penchant in local politics for making promises that will not be kept, mamaguying people to win their support and outright lying, will debates really help a suspicious electorate? As for a code of conduct, we have gone that road before, and it failed.
Notwithstanding all of this, the people want some more sense and substance from this campaign and it is time that the parties begin to deliver.