In less than a month citizens of Trinidad and Tobago will go to the polls to elect representatives who will form the government for the next five years.

General elections are important but, already, there are too many signs that the public is being side tracked into issues that are of little consequence to the improvement of life in our society.

Perhaps, it is the prospect of the keys to power and the excitement this stirs up that makes for the present state of affairs, but it will be a pity if the issues that affect the life and development of our society are kept covered over by a cloud of distractions.

Elections are contests and it is expected that those outside of the Government will want to remove the ruling party from power and that each party will attempt to discredit the other. Attention to the needs of the public, however, deserves prime attention.

In this regard, the media have a critical role to play in assisting debate on the issues that matter. The media do have a role in making democracy work and, more than ever through the advances in technology, they can affect the outcome of an election.

The parties themselves, as they prepare for the November 5 polls, have not yet made the best use of the media. Voters deserve more than catchy calypso jingles: they need to be treated as people capable of making intelligent choices.

In the weeks that are left before citizens go to the polls, are we not entitled to hear from the political leaders, at a public debate, how each intends to tackle the issues of crime and violence, what steps they will take towards the much talked about constitution reform, what they will do to provide better health care for citizens if they were to form the new government?

The public needs to know how the party that forms the next government hopes to improve the quality of life of the people of Trinidad and Tobago.

A different kind of logic

But, is the machinery of the State enough to bring about transformation of the society? Last week as Jamaican Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller went about the business of setting up a shadow Cabinet, she stressed the need for the State to work with faith-based groups.

A common enough assumption today – a materialist view - is that the State and the market are enough to deal with social problems. But, of course, the society is made up of families and congregations and voluntary organisations of one kind or another, based not on coercive power but on covenant relationships.

They operate with a different kind of logic from state institutions. Ms Simpson-Miller seems to understand well the difference and the need to get the support of faith communities if her country is to progress.

It is important to say, that the intention cannot be for faith communities to replace the State. Pope Benedict XVI states, with some emphasis, in his encyclical “God is Love” that “the Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible”.

But, adds, “she has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper” (Section 28). 

For government to work more closely with religious groups will entail some challenge; in a nation as small and multi-religious as ours, it is a complex matter.

With the support of the nation’s faith communities, however, much can be accomplished which the State and the market are in no position to achieve.