Let the law run its course

ELECTION night is over, but the campaigning is far from done.

Instead of striking a conciliatory tone, the Prime Minister on Wednesday opted to attack the UNC for doing something it is entitled to do. Behind the various requests for recounts, he asserted, is a desire to delegitimise the entire process and incite animosity.

“This is a dangerous situation,” Dr Rowley said on CNC3’s Morning Brew programme. “There is an ethnic flavour to this and the purpose is to incite a section of the population. There is a huge undercurrent of racism that has come out of this election.”

This is taking umbrage at a routine procedure – which by the PNM’s account should not change the result – and invites people to give a simple legal process a charge it would otherwise not have.

In other words, by casting the actions of his opponents in such a dismal light, Dr Rowley achieves that which he condemns: disruption of the process.

It may well be the recounts will not be the end of the matter and court action is imminent on a list of complaints. Such complaints are being compiled (as stated openly by several parties, not just the UNC).

But in a situation in which not even the people who voted can as yet say with any clarity what the exact results were, all have an interest in recounts.

And Dr Rowley would do well to remember it was the PNM that first signalled a desire to invoke the law. Even before a single vote was cast, the party said it would challenge at least one UNC safe seat.

Just as the PNM had a right to so do, whatever its motivations, so too do other parties have a right to protection of the law. The legal process should be respected and politicians should resist pronouncements before such processes have run their course.

It is precisely because we are in a dangerous, sensitive moment that the parties would do well to temper their approaches. Otherwise, they will appear to be playing to their gallery of supporters no matter the cost.

That said, we agree with the PM’s assessment of this being a nasty campaign filled with shameful invective, not just around race. Some of that came from the PNM platform.

Perhaps fittingly, such an ignominious campaign was matched on Monday with the careless position adopted by Kamla Persad-Bissessar with regard to the assembly of party supporters at Couva amid covid19 regulations.

Not to be outmatched, however, Dr Rowley, whose soldiers made heavy weather of telling people not to congregate to celebrate, was pictured in one video doing just that, masked – unlike some of his dancing companions – but not socially distant. A dangerous situation indeed.