Elections and democratic habits

Next year, including T&T, there are expected to be as many as nine Caribbean general elections. Already, the political forces are vigorously massing in Anguilla, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis. And there is the possibility of an electoral contest in deeply troubled Haiti.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the coalition government in Sint Maarten has led to July elections - only six months after voters went to the polls. But outside of this, and so far, regional election addicts will have to wait until next year to bring out past election reports, scoresheets, and arrive at informed predictions.

So far this year, we have had local government elections in Belize and Jamaica, internal PPP elections in Guyana earlier this month, and on June 17 T&T holds two local government by-elections but not before June 15 when UNC members vote to choose key party operatives, not including their political leader.

Differences in internal electoral processes attract varying degrees of public interest in the mechanics of such contests, but they provide interesting clues into the democratic habits of the people and organisations that pursue occupation of national office.

Confidence in the systems that install leaders at that level necessarily translates into the way independent-minded electorates weigh their options when it is time to either accept or reject invitations for national support.

This must have been considered when the PNM moved away from its longstanding (and often controversial) “delegate system,” for internal elections, to “one-man-one vote” a little over a decade ago. The UNC should also be reading the room when it comes to the conduct of its own affairs. The current situation appears untidy.

The messages the party’s delegation took to the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) on May 1 should now correspondingly be key areas of focus for the party’s Election Management Committee (EMC).

Elsewhere, and within recent years, there has also been cause for grave concern regarding countries to which we once paid attention as models worthy of emulation.

This has, of course, occurred elsewhere in the past - with democratically elected leaders moving to undermine the bases of even their own selection through autocratic, anti-democratic behaviour.

Even so, there is little doubt that recent electoral decision-making around the globe has not always conduced to more democratic conditions. Witness recent electoral outcomes in Europe and Latin America, for example - relatively free and fair events producing results that do not necessarily reflect democratic values.

It can also be said that our big neighbour, the United States, at this moment does not present us with official behaviour that encourages broad or real political participation, while the politics of the United Kingdom are now more frequently offering lessons in the absurd.

Everywhere there appear to be conditions for re-examining electoral decision making to ensure more faithful observance of the needs of populations and application of principles to make life better for people.

Elections and their accompanying campaigns ought to signal levels of commitment to such an idea beyond the harnessing of votes.

On July 28, for example, the people of Venezuela vote at a time when an honest dialogue is needed to address the indisputable circumstances that led to a mass exodus of citizens over recent years. Has the Maduro regime put this on the table?

For November 4, against the backdrop of recklessly injurious actions against multilateralism and open violations of international law, is there a recognisable electoral platform exploring such depravities when it comes to the United States?

In India, where despite obvious progress at the macro-economic level continued hunger and socio-economic alienation prevail, the current lengthy electoral process (over 970 million voters!!!) is hardly being considered a watershed moment to help fill the gaps.

Ditto the UK’s July 4 elections with the possibility of stabilising a situation in which there have been four prime ministers over the past eight years representing the same political party; with none having served an entire term in office even as renowned social services sink into disarray.

As we speak, disgruntled, disappointed South Africans are today at the polls and the ruling ANC might struggle to attract over 50% of the vote.

For the rest of us, these examples hardly offer best practice models in the modern era. Election watchers should be keeping an eye out not only for statistical outcomes but for the extent to which elections are delivering results reflecting developmental needs.

Next year, we in T&T and some of our neighbours will need to get clearer directions on the hustings to ensure our votes truly count, however much the challenge clearly persists elsewhere.

Equal Opportunity for Some

Last week’s observance of International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) focused specifically on the threat that a lack of action on discrimination against members of the LGBT+ community can produce the awful impact of leaving some of our citizens behind.

“No One to be left Behind” was the adopted slogan against a backdrop of “Freedom and Justice for All.”

Those of us who subscribe to the view that observance of human rights requires recognition of their universal nature – meaning that all human rights are for everyone – find easy resonance between such a conviction and last week’s themes and sub-themes.

There is also the question of rights being indivisible, and inalienable, meaning that they cannot be sub-divided for convenience, and no one or no circumstance should ever be capable of taking them away.

The alternative, among other things, is the reality of officially-sanctioned prejudice and discrimination, and the hatred that either fuels much of it or emerges from it.

On another battlefront, for example, we have noted the degree to which reducing new migrant populations to caricature, linguistic mockery, and negative stereotyping has stimulated pervasive prejudice, contempt, and ensuing hate.

The “close de borders” crowd remonstrating angrily as Venezuelan men, women, and children lined up for “processing” in June 2019 in the rain were acting based on feelings of ill-will with the intention of seeing the animosity grow. I am yet to be convinced otherwise.

Since then, we have had to digest the fact that babies and children were kept behind bars, school age children have been denied the right to an education, and breaches of our country’s labour legislation have been routinised when it comes to migrants. These are not acts that proceed out of love.  

Meanwhile, an alliance has also been established to address issues associated with age and health condition/status when it comes to our Equality Opportunity Act.

The Add All Three campaign, led by the Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO), focuses on these two omissions together with the legislated depravity of our EOC when it comes to the LGBT+ community.

However polite the resistance to change on the latter subject, in the main rooted in supposedly benevolent intentions, harm is an inevitable outcome once employment, housing, education and other opportunities are decidedly rendered out of the reach of some without offence to a law designed to guard against discrimination.

I am aware of the legal work once done to correct the LGBT+ anomaly reflected in the explicit exclusion of “sexual orientation” (not that this is even a correct formulation) as a basis for challenging deprivation of employment, educational, and other socio-economic opportunity.

Such reform was actually initiated from within the Equal Opportunity Commission by people who are no longer there. The current occupants of office need to resume the struggle.

It is nevertheless true that international conventions, to which we are willingly and boastfully subscribed, already point in recommended directions in all areas mentioned here, but the force of domestic law/protections is clearly necessary under current circumstances.

Why has this not been placed on the parliamentary agenda? Why is there not a stronger groundswell of political pressure to rectify this? Are we going to witness the appearance of these issues in forthcoming political manifestoes?

Last week, while speaking about this on IDAHOBIT at a British High Commission function, I also wondered aloud why a greater number of us in T&T are not embarrassed by the specific travesty regarding “sexual orientation” in our EOA.

Put in plain language, we have a law that promises to address the issue of equality of economic and other opportunity to the citizenry, but very pointedly excludes some. The framers of the law did not even care to engage in passive omission as has been the case with age and discrimination based on health status.

While that is being corrected, and as we pay attention to Add All Three and rectify our clumsiness over the rights of new migrants, we must acknowledge that we are offering equal opportunity to some, and not to all.

Is this how we wish to proceed? Should we fear the answer to this question?

Free Express and AI

Though last week’s Caribbean Media Summit hosted in Jamaica by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM), and Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) focused primarily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) media and journalism, ominous public policy measures loomed in the background.

In fact, while media industry standards and self-regulation were emphasised throughout as singularly effective in addressing most concerns, numerous conversations over the three days of activities drifted seamlessly into what regional governments may plan to do about the unfolding phenomenon of “Generative AI” – the occurrence of content produced by AI.

One online contributor (there were almost 200 participants on the Zoom connection and another 30-40 physically present) surmised that the region’s customary technology “lag” was on display, and I thought out loud that perhaps our delay in fully entering the process can provide some small space to consider more carefully how willing we really are to entertain regulatory arms of the state.

It would also provide time to consider human rights, including freedom of expression, as an indispensable element of the unfolding scenario.

I have long been of the view that almost everything new to enter our post-colonial space has confronted a prohibition default. Few better issues than the major revolution of artificial intelligence to instil the kind of fear required to have officialdom activate regulatory drawbridges.

It became clear as the Summit proceeded that even among liberal-minded media professionals there was a view that caution on the side of official control ought to be a preferred option.

This left precious few of us standing alone. I had mocked the admonitory notion that “non-human intervention” into public values and standards presented grave dangers and advised that such intrusions were nothing new in our context and that perhaps organised religion (relatively free, as it were, from official sanction) can be cited as being among acceptable exceptions.

Yes, this was highly mischievous on my part, but I thought that the sorcerous implications of AI being described there could have served only to invoke the kinds of feelings that make us want to arrest and jail one another … or to shut each other up. So, yes, I continue to subscribe to the view that fewer regulations on public communication produce superior results over more laws, codes, and punitive official measures.

It is also true that today’s virtual realities have rendered most forms of regulatory coercion on expression an anachronism of the highest order. If anything, sanctions unilaterally determined by the major global platforms have been far more effective at imposing regimes of censorship.

Last year, for example, my social media photograph of raw oysters was flagged under some opaque requirement to adhere to “Community Standards.” Last week, the same strange message notifying of a decision to block a post appeared when I submitted an excerpt from this newspaper column! And I knew I was not being naughty.

We customarily protest these measures citing flawed algorithms or even AI itself, but the point I am making is that to a large extent, Big Tech companies such as Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have outgrown most governments in influencing online behaviours – many times irrationally and wrongly so.

There is thus a vigorous, nuanced discussion on how best to rein in these global superpowers in a manner that does not compromise the right to freedom of expression of their users.

Additionally, and getting back to Mark Lyndersay’s “time lag” (yes, it was him), the slow pace of digitalisation by our countries has created a situation in which the mining of online content for purposes of AI content creation grossly under-represents our actual reality.

UNESCO’s unfolding Caribbean AI Policy Roadmap flags some of these issues but takes aim more directly at the potential developmental impact of informed, ethical usage. There are significant provisos though that point to aspirations that are current deficiencies.

These include our ability to adapt effectively to technological advances, appropriate governance mechanisms for development and use, and ensuring that the challenges of sustainable development, the climate crisis, and socio-economic inequities can be addressed.

But all of this would be a tall order in the face of deficiencies in the areas of training and education, and the urgent need to promote greater digital literacy among our populations. These shortcomings cannot be legislated into resolution. My supposedly anarchic prescription, bypassing the instinct to command and control, appears eminently feasible under the circumstances.

 

Open governance and survival

Last week, at least two major events occurred with close relevance to Caribbean development that ought to have signalled greater urgency regarding the tasks required to ensure the viability of our tiny states.

In what must be described as a hugely enlightened moment, UNESCO chose “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the Environmental Crisis” as the global theme for observance of World Press Freedom Day 2024.

The other significant occasion was the launch of a “Review of the Legislative Framework of Freedom of Information and Access to Information Legislation in the English-speaking Caribbean” by the Kingston-headquartered Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) – which I serve as Vice President.

What was important about both events was that these two activities had been recognised (both before and during) as being mutually beneficial and co-dependent.

In summary: without recognition of the right of our populations to access information held in trust on their behalf by public agencies, there can be little progress with making the several issues of survival priority items in an informed public space.

Access to/freedom of information laws, for instance, form part of a society’s toolkit to assist it in getting to the bottom of issues affecting it. This, some of us assert, is a question of legal right and not a privilege extended by benevolent governments.

Caribbean countries that have refused to either pass such legislation or ensure that its existing form is meaningful are in breach of the kind of relationship that acknowledges such a right.

Furthermore, all our countries have signed onto a multiplicity of global commitments with explicit obligations to ensure that citizens have a legal right to access information held by public entities – albeit with a narrow selection of widely-acceptable exceptions.

I can cite several such commitments under the thematic banners of Open Government, Maximum Disclosure, and other undertakings related to satisfaction of the requirements of what is described as “the public interest.”

When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were being negotiated, for instance, media development groups all lobbied vociferously for the assurance that public access to information should form part of this global thrust to pursue a developmental paradigm that was sustainable. Such an aspiration is now found in Target 16.10 of the SDGs.

There is also the hemispheric Escazu Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. (As far as I am aware and from the available literature, T&T, Barbados, The Bahamas, and Suriname are not signatories to/have not ratified this.)

Among the several uses of this resource is an ability to acquaint journalists and other citizens with the information they require to make sense of public affairs. Last week we advised regional journalists that their investigations need not stop at the point where a public official says “no” to you - the norm in too many instances.

The MIC had established a regional “ATI Help Desk” to assist in taking difficult cases several steps further. But even if such a mechanism did not exist, the existence of an ATI/FOI law in Caribbean countries provides a theoretical avenue for access.

Both the UNESCO focus on “the environmental crisis” – and there are those who do not agree that we confront a profoundly serious “crisis” – and the MIC study establish key linkages between media and civil society performance and the capacity of people to intervene meaningfully in their present and future.

UNESCO expressed the challenge by declaring the concept of sustainable development “in jeopardy”, meaning that “the triple planetary crisis—climate change, biodiversity loss, and air pollution - along with their connections to public health issues, the need to strengthen democracy, to tackle dis-/misinformation on digital platforms, among other issues have become major challenges for humanity.”

I am not sure whether all of last week’s Caribbean celebrants understood the gravity of such a declaration by the world body. On the evidence, UNESCO has not engaged in alarmist hyperbole. Neither has the MIC overstated the case for greater openness in the management of officially held information.

In both instances, these ambitions confront a pervasive culture of secrecy; the right to know being a chronic omission in the practice of governance.

Take a close look at the issues occupying the news agendas of the region and tell me in which instance has the absence of open governance not been at the root of numerous current crises.

UNESCO’s admonition and the MIC work programme could not possibly have been more on target.

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Digital governance - being left behind

My riding partner, Steve, will surely assert that I am once again flogging the seemingly dead or dying horse of our country’s digital ambitions.

But I am prepared to risk insult and mockery for the sake of yet again placing on public record my belief that the current transition to things digital currently confronts emotional and institutional barriers constructed of reinforced brick and steel.

I have witnessed the techies tear both dark and greying hair from their heads over this. At a time when serious societies are mulling the positives and negatives of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) – several jumps ahead of simple digitalisation - there are local and regional bureaucracies and private sector entities stumbling over questions of first phase conversion and the application of rapidly ageing, automated solutions.

The experts consider people like me to be citizen or customer “users”, because we don’t have to master the technical and operational requirements but need at least to acknowledge some amazing leaps in our ability to conduct complex transactions using digital technology.

I have no intention of getting involved in big people business, but I am almost certain that the current unseemly fiasco involving the Minister of Finance and the Auditor General is not completely disassociated from this phenomenon of bungling unpreparedness.

I tried to follow the minister’s explanations which sought to get to the bottom of the accounting anomaly in question and it resonated in so many familiar ways when you consider the repeated admonitions published in this space.

That this explains the conundrum and paints the misapplication of an automated process as a best-case scenario is piteous, to say the least.

But that’s as far as I will go on this question.

So, let’s also have a look at what’s happening at our airports (and perhaps our seaports). I do not sense the hand of ill intent in the current state of digital underdevelopment. But there is, at minimum, aggressive hesitation with employing readily available, simple technological solutions.

Electronic Embarkation-Disembarkation (ED) cards, for example, are now standard fare in several Caribbean countries – applied in varying degrees of sophistication, of course, because they too face Luddite apprehensions.

Over here, we are still completing paper documents with information already in an efficient Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) employed by most airlines/Caribbean countries and which can be accessed by authorities here by a swipe of a barcode or passport at an immigration desk or kiosk (remember those?).

The use of these useless forms in T&T is even more ridiculous these days because you are now required to hand write in any arbitrary space (because there is no field in the current departure form) the expiry date of your passport. Refuse to do it and you aren’t going anywhere! Instead of the situation getting better, it is getting worse.

Sure. It’s not just us. I am aware of what transpires among our regional neighbours. Electronic processes are also viewed there as serious threats to authority and both high and low-level power. The use of electronic ED cards is, consequently, not always a flawless process.

Now, for the ttconnect website – this marvel of digital governance that promised a one-stop experience when accessing online government services, but which is now reduced to being a directory of links to government offices.

The cold, hard fact is that this significant portal which could have at least symbolised recognition of a new digital reality has not been working as it should for almost two years now.

Back in 2018 when the country’s ICT Plan 2018-2022 was being introduced to hopeful businesspeople, late Minister of Public Administration, Marlene McDonald was quoted as saying: “The world is changing and it is doing so much more rapidly than before, thanks to constant evolutions and innovations in the field of technology. It certainly does not serve our country’s interests if we sit idly by and allow ourselves to be left behind while the rest of the world moves on.”

Six years later, can we say we are being left behind? My pal, Steve, rather cruelly concludes that we are fading from view in the rear-view mirrors of most of the rest of the world at our level of economic development.

 

Elections and the media connection

Though the political anniversaries that signal the onset of more intense electoral activity in the Caribbean aren’t fully due until next year, the hustings appear never to have faded into the background providing gratuitous leeway for developmental agendas.

In most instances, such as ours, the campaigning never ended; together with all associated instincts for division, conflict, and a lack of cohesion.

Note, that in 2025 there can be as many as nine elections in our region, including sharp contests right here in T&T, Jamaica, Suriname, and Guyana.

There are also expected to be contests in St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Anguilla. Haiti was always a doubtful starter, even when now exiled prime minister Ariel Henry promised polls next year.

We shall see how that unfolds now that a Transitional Presidential Council is in place (following some remarkable work by Caricom) and the domestic and external games to undermine the Council’s influence and relevance have already been launched.

It has been clear that the relationship between media performance and the credibility of electoral outcomes can always be assumed.

This applies everywhere else. In Sierra Leone as a Commonwealth observer last year, for instance, I was assigned specific responsibility for examining media coverage of the electoral process there, and while there are significant differences in institutional landscapes, the role of journalists remained key to how the process unfolded.

It can be said that ensuing events in that country have hinged heavily on the quality of coverage of prevailing, lingering conflict by domestic, regional, and international media.

In Haiti, at this moment, there is the real threat that the collapse of credible, independent media will serve to reinforce the already powerful influence of a hugely compromised public communication landscape.

In the process, critical concerns related to health, food security, the provision of social services, the promotion of peace, and the brittle status of marginalised groups persist outside the frame of consistent, professional media coverage. In this context, media performance can become a matter of life and death.

Last week, at a meeting of global press freedom and free expression groups in Berlin, I joined with ACM President, Harvey Panka, in asserting, among other things, the urgency of ensuring the viability of existing independent media outlets in Haiti. This is proving to be a rather tall order, as worst-case scenarios are not always easily defined.

It is not always understood that the silencing of journalists is achievable by means other than violent, deadly attack … as we all know in other necks of the Caribbean woods.

Violations of independent reporting occur both through rewards and penalties. There is a concern, for example, that state advertising can be, and has been, used in the Caribbean as a tool to achieve the objective of bringing media enterprises in line with compliant narratives. Corporate entities also employ such methods.

In the context of elections, I have been an advocate for media enterprises to agree to transparent accounting requirements when it comes to political campaign spend by political parties – much of which is absorbed by media companies.

This is not universally supported within the industry, but I believe it can form part of a best-practice model when it comes to media practice at times of elections. There is also need for a wholesome, enlightened discussion around social media.

The feelings of many practitioners and advocates on such matters form the basis for a number of interventions with which I have been associated over the years.

For example, through the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers’ (ACM) Election Handbook for Caribbean Journalists, published in 2009 and edited by Lennox Grant and myself, there is guidance on the professional and ethical conduct of media enterprises and their journalists to assure devoted vigilance and to insulate themselves from claims of bias.

Nobody believes such an injunction meets a perfect state of affairs. Media audiences are, especially through their engagement of social media, becoming far more capable of detecting deception in the form of mis and disinformation. But not always.

There is still a lot more work to be done to meet the deliverables of media and information literacy.

Social media engine rooms run by political party operatives in T&T are already up and running and, in many cases, are easily recognisable. Their role in either ensuring or undermining the benefits of democratic practice is open for debate and discussion.

Professional journalism confronts a stern test as elections approach. Our democracy relies on its successful navigation of the challenges.

 

Getting away with murder

April 17, 2024 - Even as we collectively lament a news agenda over-laden with accounts of indescribably horrific acts of murderous violence has come information that glimmers of comforting hope at times such as these remain stubbornly absent.

Whatever the official promises and declarations, there has clearly been no progress in reversing this country’s deplorable detection rate when it comes to murder.

Shane Superville’s GML story on Sunday noted a halving of the detection rate for homicides from an already modest 16% over the first three months of 2023, to 8% between January 1 and April 1 this year.

Put another way; this year so far, there were arrests in only 11 of the 142 reported murders during the period. Now, to be fair, this does not mean to say that is the end of that, since police investigations could well have since yielded positive results with these specific cases. So maybe, in the end, the statistic will be 10% or 12%. I don't know.

The sociologists and people whose work involves looking closely at these things, both globally and parochially, must certainly, at this stage, be developing conclusions on the impact of high, chronic impunity on societies such as ours, widespread fear being among the first and most intense impacts.

Some have also pointed to the changing nature of homicides in T&T, now dominated by organised activity and what some describe as “psychotic” events. Knowing more about these things can change the manner in which modus operandi are addressed.

For instance, the incidence of organised crime is in part being addressed through anti-gang legislation with more focused and increased penalties, and changes on the question of bail.

Even so, the fact that a murderer is much more likely than not to get away with such a grievous act, has had a far more influential impact on the current situation than the fear of punishment and the judicial interpretation of harsh laws.

In my view, the knowledge that you are highly likely to be caught and promptly punished provides conditions for a far higher level of deterrence. The deterrent effect of punishments, capital punishment for murder for example, has time and again been questioned by people who know much about these things.

What is needed is for murderers to be captured, brought to trial, and punished as promptly as possible. So, this is a matter first and foremost of enlightened, highly motivated, and well-resourced policing, followed by the efficient delivery of justice, and the ameliorative effects of punishment.

Preventative interventions are a key and necessary part of the required dynamic, but there is now an immediate need to bring violators to justice. How and why things reached this stage flow as parallel, not overlapping concerns.

The role of legislators, across the political aisle, also has to be founded on greater coherence – all sides listening closely to the other. What currently obtains in T&T is far from this ideal. It has not helped that political leadership on the subject has been grossly deficient when it comes to collective deliberation and intervention.

Crime detection rates are not the stuff of political one-upmanship, especially when loss of life is involved - however critical the quality of legislative and executive leadership. The experiences of others also signal the questionable impact of vigilantism and the serious danger of extra-judicial murder – both implicit in the lobby for more guns and the return to the “good old days” when the police are said to have been prepared to skip trials and go straight for fatal punishment.

There is a role for academia here in providing clearer direction on such matters to avoid unthinking revenge becoming a dangerous substitute for justice. This is particularly important at this dark time.

But there remains no “spin” to untangle the emotions that flow from feelings of hopelessness. No political grandiloquence capable of explaining away open evidence of incapacity. No resort to magical intervention as anodyne for the failings of human effort sufficient to bring assurance and confidence.

It is also significant that nothing about this is brand new or estimated in measures of electoral terms. My personal journalistic archives in recent decades do not record a time when, as a noted trend spanning any significant period, investigative outcomes yielded anything to suggest that a durable trend of effective policing was at hand.

The current situation in fact does not signify a relapse of any kind, but the escalation of persistent decline. Getting away with murder has long been a disturbing norm.