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Chair­man of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour (CRPB), Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, has re­vealed that the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion cam­paign was marred by mul­ti­ple breach­es of the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Con­duct, rais­ing con­cerns about the tone and ma­tu­ri­ty of po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment in To­ba­go.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Ra­goonath said both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties – the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) – com­mit­ted in­frac­tions dur­ing the cam­paign pe­ri­od, un­der­scor­ing what he de­scribed as sig­nif­i­cant “room for im­prove­ment’ in po­lit­i­cal con­duct.

“In terms of the breach­es, there were sev­er­al breach­es of the code,” Ra­goonath said. “They in­clud­ed the use of in­ap­pro­pri­ate lan­guage, race-bait­ing and the de­face­ment of po­lit­i­cal ban­ners and para­pher­na­lia from var­i­ous par­ties. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think any­body took us on se­ri­ous­ly, as it came up right up un­til the day be­fore elec­tion day. State­ments from the po­lit­i­cal plat­forms left a lot to be de­sired in terms of ap­ply­ing the code.”