A plague on both houses

LIKE THE families in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the two biggest political parties have been at war with one another ahead of the August 10 general election.

But whereas this election season has already given beleaguered voters a master class in dirty politics, ensuring the Council for Responsible Political Behaviour has enough work to see it well into the next poll, the PNM and the UNC have managed to find one area of common ground: disdain for the covid19 regulations.

National unity has long been a dream, but it really should not look like this.

Scores of supporters from both parties spilling onto the street on nomination day. Masks apparently optional. No social distancing.

In fact, some went as far as to do the exact opposite. For instance, throwing caution to the wind, they hugged up outside the office of former MP for Port-of-Spain South, Marlene Mc Donald on Piccadilly Street. They danced, they ramajayed.

Witness a new meaning to the expression “diehard supporter.”

Nomination day turned out to be a missed opportunity for both parties to lead by example. The failure went right to the top.

The Prime Minister is seldom seen at public events without a mask. But as he duelled with the UNC candidate for Diego Martin West, Marsha Walker, Dr Rowley removed his cover. Regardless of what he said to her, the image captured by the cameras sent the wrong signal to the national community.

Showing just how catching this kind of conduct really is, UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has by now been pictured at several walkabouts, motorcades and events without a mask. Often, too, she is pictured amid groups that appear not to be exercising social distancing.

In other countries, masks have become politicised. For example, in the US the approach to whether you should or are willing to wear a mask in a store tends to fall along the political divide.

We suffer from no such impairment. The medical officials, the international bodies – their advice is pellucid and understood. The local population fails to follow those rules by choice, not out of ignorance.

Meanwhile, the State has chastised bar customers for being lax, and bar owners for not being stringent enough.

“Considering what we have been doing over the last three months, this group is putting all of us at risk,” Dr Rowley said a few weeks ago.

Those words now apply to his own constituency.

Over the weekend, the Ministry of Health extended the current rules until September 30 and relaxed the additional restrictions applied to bars but not other comparable businesses.

But the optics are bad. They say the rules are for some, not all. And that is dangerous.