As Trinidad and To­ba­go awakes to this year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Chair­man of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, has com­mend­ed the over­all con­duct of the elec­tion cam­paigns run by the po­lit­i­cal par­ties de­spite iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents which would have caused dis­rup­tions.

In his fi­nal as­sess­ment of the pe­ri­od with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ra­goonath not­ed that the laps­es which breached the coun­cil’s code did not pose sig­nif­i­cant threats to the elec­torate.

“There were one or two in­stances of phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion. But be­yond the phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion and de­fac­ing and de­struc­tion of cam­paign para­pher­na­lia, those were the two great­est ar­eas of con­cern for us, as well as some deroga­to­ry lan­guage, the cam­paign could have done with­out. Gen­er­al­ly, we had a peace­ful cam­paign and a peace­ful elec­tion.”