The Media Challenge

Last Wednesday, the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) convened a virtual “conversation” on regional media coverage of elections. The panellists included Dr Steve Surujbally, a former chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) who has served on election observer missions all over the world.

Alongside Dr Surujbally was decorated Jamaican journalist, elections observer and former Editor-in-Chief of the Jamaica Gleaner, Wyvolyn Gager. Then there was T&T-based Saint Lucian journalist, Peter Richards, who has covered numerous Caribbean elections.

The background to this exercise was the fact that this year as many as ten elections are likely to be held in full and associate Caricom member states. Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) was the first to go to the polls on Feb 7 and the Progressive National Party (PNP) maintained its hold on power there.

Next up, on February 26, was Anguilla where the Anguilla United Front (AUF) under now first-time female premier, Cora Richardson-Hodge, turned the tables on the incumbent Anguilla Progressive Movement (APM).

Curaçao, where there is proportional representation (PR), held its elections on March 21 and Gilmar Pisas was returned as prime minister. On the immediate horizon are T&T on April 28 and Suriname (PR) on May 25. Not far behind are Guyana (PR), Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and we do not know what will happen in Haiti.

Such a backdrop was useful to declare since there are unique, interesting features of each country’s electoral system and practice requiring clinical dissection, and lessons to be learned regarding media coverage of encounters there.

Though media performance was the main focus, we spent some valuable time fleshing out the view that there are systemic issues associated with our electoral systems that do not do not always produce outcomes of the greatest democratic value. I will explain what I mean by that in a while.

Relatedly, it was argued that “voter apathy” had become a recurring fixture of elections, in part because of a lack of confidence in the ability of the process to reflect collectively fashioned views on our countries’ developmental paths.

Accounting in part for this is the fact that our political parties have been efficient at identifying symptoms of our dysfunction and not always focused on key structural, causative factors.

Additionally, there does not exist a perfect electoral system and informed national discussions focused on fixing key elements are needed.

Yes, this is not a new concern, though we generally operate pretty tight systems with high levels of institutional accountability and responsibility in most instances.

The political organisations that mobilise for electoral contests should find ways of integrating the prospects for change, if required, as part of their platform talk.

Moreso, journalists should better acquaint themselves with such matters so as to expand the coverage of campaigns and the entire elections process beyond routinised claims and counterclaims and outlandish promises.

For journalists, elections should also increasingly be recognised as a process and not as a singular event confined to campaigns comprising claims and counterclaims, gratuitous doses of defamation and character-assassination, spectacularly contrived defections, and the disingenuous insertion of personal taste and views into expert and reportorial narratives.

There is a concern that while there is abundant focus on some discrete components of the electoral cycle that begin and end with announcement of an election date and declaration of a result, there are important features of what happens between elections often ignored or inadequately addressed.

Additionally, with voter education being a key output of election reporting, there are parts of the process that are too often neglected or under-reported outside of isolated fiascos associated with them.

Focusing on these areas requires critical and knowledgeable journalistic attention to existing electoral and representative systems and their impact on the sustenance of democratic conditions.

For example, does the first-past-the-post constituency system produce outcomes truly representative of “the will of the people?” What becomes of the 39% or 42%, or even the 10% or 15% of the electorate that did not support the victorious politicians?

Every time the T&T constitution is being discussed, this comes up in the context of the PR option – too often minus thoughts on the desired version of the system. Guyana and Suriname offer different approaches next door and there are others elsewhere.

No time for all this now though. In under one week from now, we shall see where slick and shabby campaigns, and predictable narratives have taken us. The journalists who have contained their personal enthusiasm have played their important parts, but hopefully in the knowledge that much, much more is expected.

Some important differences

Let’s face it: Most of us simply want the things around us to work properly – nature, people, machines, institutions, systems. To the extent that we can speak about an “average citizen”, we can safely conclude that such a cohort would rather get on with life, its joys and its challenges, and to do so safely, in good health, and with as few inconveniences as possible.

There should also be the means to participate in society devoid of significant need when it comes to shelter and other economic, social, and cultural rights.

It is therefore totally understandable that a country’s power arrangements, in all their manifestations, enter the equation at critical points of such aspirations. It is also natural, that in the cut and thrust of election campaigning these matters would dominate the public discourse. Mind you, we are not alone in this.

In the Caribbean, this year for example, there are likely to be as many as nine national elections, including the scheduled but highly unlikely encounter in Haiti. In every instance, the meeting of basic needs dominates the public discourse, as it should.

Pay close attention, as I have, to those just past and to the others to come, including ours, and you will recognise vast areas of common concern, together with all the familiar assets and liabilities of our heritage of political culture and practice.

We can discuss at another time, if you wish, the colonial legacy and the extent to which we ought to be able to begin taking responsibility for ourselves as citizens and as polities.

Even so, there is a declining yet significant number of people in our countries for whom solutions and progress are viewed solely within the context of what the political institutions of their own durable private/tribal choice or taste can achieve. Alternatives are pre-emptively discarded as unrealistic options.

This is also despite the fact that in most instances there is little to separate the prescriptions of competing parties. There is no fundamental philosophy to distinguish them from each other.

Everywhere, there is the lure of the theocratic state, for example, leaving unfinished business when it comes to key areas of human rights. It is amazing the harmony on LGBT+ rights, capital punishment, the subservience of the state under the powers of the Church, among others.

There is, as well, psycho-social reliance on authoritarian behaviours both by the ruled and the rulers. Hence, non-resolution of important rules of the governance game including the separation of powers, and the degree to which post-colonial thought remains entrenched in our constitutions in the letter of savings clauses or after the spirit of unchallenged power.

This makes solutions-driven decision-making declarations rather illusory - “fixing” things expressed purely as abstruse and deceptive expressions of essentially immovable personal or collective preference. It’s more difficult to conceal such a condition nowadays – that fixing things is an exclusive tribal preserve.

That said, there remains a lot to be done, and a long history of shortcomings. Digital transformation in both the private and public sectors is sluggish and insufficiently deep.

There is, understandably, a lot of emphasis on public service developments because people simply do not have the options that are otherwise available within private enterprise.

But tell me the difference at the counter of a bank or insurance company and the one facing you at any state agency. Be honest.

Burdensome business processes in the private sector easily match inefficiencies in the state domain. Serious people routinely recognise the digital facades. Make no mistake about it, these two areas of concern –  the digital lag and archaic business processes - are evident across the board.

We can all also speak about depravities in private health, whatever the undoubted and tragic deficiencies in our system of socialised medicine. There is however little in the public domain to distinguish differences in approaches to fixing these things by those who claim superior credentials.

That said, and back to the politics, there are behaviours that ought to determine important, albeit narrow distinctions. Actions executed and things said at times of deepest, darkest societal need, for instance. The resort to ad hominem attack over reasoned argument. And, of course, a notion of the genetic superiority of one group over another.

These are the things, even above the transactional aches, that should make a difference in the end. When choices need to be made.

 

New and old T&T election business

Stick around long enough in the media business during election season, and you’ll recognise the substance in the old, biblical saying that there’s “nothing new under the sun.”

Our elections repeat familiar themes: party defections, propaganda (aka fake news), mysterious financial flows for campaigning, criminal charges, unethical behaviour, race-baiting, bribery, grossly over-inflated/unrealistic promises, and endless finger-pointing. The methods may change, but the plot stays essentially the same.

Even party rebels have become entirely predictable as an election story. Poll the generations and detect variances in “wow” factors regarding the party “switcheroos” - a word launched in the local lexicon by late T&T Guardian EIC, Carl Jacobs in the early 1990s - later borrowed by me, and “corrected” to read “switchcross” by editors of a UWI publication on the 1995 elections.

Still, none of this predictability makes elections dull or unimportant. Despite strikingly similar party agendas and shared reliance on state-driven solutions, electoral results should help shape public opinion, influence policy directions, and sharpen national priorities.

Consider actions against the scourge of violent crime, chronically (and in my view erroneously) focused on policing as supreme anodyne. Can you tell the difference between the parties, apart from the faces? GML’s Bavita Gopaulchan’s interrogation of some key players Monday together with platform rhetoric have not identified fundamental differences, though there is nothing to suggest an absence of genuine concern.

Also “economic diversification”- a fanciful term that pops up every cycle but rarely leads to comprehensive follow up, with every party hypnotically drawn back to energy revenues.

Heading into 2025, it all seems predictable. The way political content is being generated and spread appears to be a singular area of real change. Yesterday’s pamphleteers and propagandists are today’s social media activists, armed with memes and AI. Paid social media teams have long been assembled. The WhatsApp groups are teeming.

Meanwhile, much of the panic around AI-generated content - deepfakes, fake audio, doctored videos - isn’t about brand-new technology tailor-made for political deception. Even basic manipulation, enabling forged signatures and edited clips, has been around for ages.

The disgraceful Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2010 wasn’t the first or last of its kind either, though it did help push data privacy laws forward and brought current thinking on cybercrime more in line with reality.

Still, generative AI can make deception easier and more convincing. While AI isn’t the core problem, its misuse highlights how far some will go to mislead. The real issue seems to be the belief that dishonesty can win votes.

Cue the social scientists, now better known for off-the-cuff/top-of-the-head media “comments” as substitutes for studied research which, even so, needs to extend beyond the exclusive use of historical data. We should better understand the perils of over-reliance on both methods of explaining current realities.

But we can still look at some issues of historical fact for initial guidance. People are buzzing about the number of parties in this election - 17 in total. But that’s not a record. There were 19 in pandemic-stricken 2020. And back in 1976 and 1981, we had 11 and 12 respectively.

Voter turnout? Even the legendary 1986 33-3 landslide had a 65.45% turnout - still below the 88.11% peak of 1961. We’ve hovered around 65% average for decades. Without a major, phenomenal, shakeup, that’s unlikely to change.

But those with historical and contemporary interest would be well-advised to seek out some demographic indicators that have been largely absent in much of the current guesswork. I think there might be some important differences in 2025.

The presence of international observer missions is also more likely than not to confirm the professional conduct of the Elections and Boundaries Commissions (EBC), ritualised claims against which have never been proven outside of the predictable mauvais langue.

Ditto the importation of votes. I have before pointed to the existence of migration data to disprove longstanding mythical claims of 1961 malfeasance involving neighbouring island populations, and today there is the same kind of ole talk surrounding Venezuelans.

As for leadership changes close to elections? Not new. George Chambers became prime minister after Eric Williams’ death on March 29 and was appointed party leader after the fact, winning the elections of November 9, 1981.

ANR Robinson was chosen to lead the NAR months before the 1986 win. Kamla Persad-Bissessar won leadership of the UNC in January and led the party to victory in May 2010. The first time Keith Rowley entered an election as leader of the PNM was in the 2015 win.

In short, the drama might look different, but the stories are mostly the same. Let’s challenge ourselves to recognise today’s differences if there are any.

T&T’s digital drag

Though it does not currently appear to be the case, it should occur to all April 28 competitors that among the voting population there now resides a large cohort of adult folks who consider election promises to be dispensable fluff unless a clear path to achievability is offered.

This is defiant of even stubborn traditional loyalties and punishable by rejection of the entire system of electoral selection. Survey first and second-time eligible voters and see what I mean.

They, more than others, see that the penalty for not paying close attention to the “hows” of the numerous “whats” is the pain we repeatedly endure each time campaign dust settles and we begin going about our business in the expectation that some critical features of our lives will change ... for the better.

Among the common threads is the notion that the achievement of modernity in the conduct of public business has the potential to assure better outcomes. For the digital generation, this is an indispensable pre-requisite for deeper personal engagement.

For this group, an efficient, technology-driven government is not a luxury - it is a necessity. They view digital transformation as a prerequisite for deeper civic engagement and trust in leadership.

Let’s face it, there exists no fundamental ideological differences among the several contestants. There is no one on the national stage, for example, suggesting that the state should withdraw substantially from service delivery in key areas including public health, education, social infrastructure, and Eric Williams’  1973 direct and indirect control of the “commanding heights of the economy.”

Today, there is the challenge of engaging, even within the context of these longstanding philosophical commitments, the task of dragging the country, seemingly kicking and screaming, into the realities of vastly changed times.

This space has been used too many times to remind us that the digital economy is no longer a matter of choice and that hesitation on this matter is costing us dearly, inclusive of the psychological detachment of the young.

These people know that the resolution of challenges goes beyond the mere acquisition of the available technological tools and resides in the mindset that drives receptivity or rejection. There are numerous examples of where we lag significantly behind.

Every single political party, for example, has lamented difficulties regarding the “ease of doing business.”

The tech experts are meanwhile unanimously declaring that among the major obstacles is the fact that both private and public sector lethargy has contributed substantially to the current state of affairs and that the challenge exceeds the requirements of regulation and legislation.

Online government services are unreliable and the slow private sector embrace of appropriate technologies - through employment of digital façades to mask manual backends – has meant that things are almost purposely meant to proceed slowly and inefficiently.

No! An “online” transaction does not end in the ability to download a PDF for completion before emailing back to the agency! My online payment should not take days “to process.” You’re doing it all wrong because you do not truly trust it. It’s not paper and signatures and flesh and blood at a counter.

Until I see battalions of under-30s in the frontline of the required progress, I will remain sceptical about any real commitment to change. So don’t come to me with this “ease of doing business” bellyache without telling me how you propose to make the promised changes through readily available technological solutions that render transactions more cost-effective, seamless, and with the impact of lowering (not increasing) the cost of doing business.

Additionally, a brief word on the so-called “cashless economy” – an admirable objective that does not deserve casual, ill-advised rejection. All change involves real and/or perceived risks.

Cashless transactions, depending on how things are arranged, can in fact come up against privacy and other issues if we do not learn from others. But the wider, undeniable benefits of security and convenience demand that serious attention be paid to proper execution – if we ever reach that point.

A visually impaired beggar in India was recently photographed seeking contributions via a QR code on his t-shirt activating a phone cash transfer! The latter practice is widely employed throughout Asia and parts of Africa.

Speaking (embarrassingly) of which, we are among the last few Caribbean states to move to implement online Arrival Cards for incoming passengers. The story behind this goes beyond the availability of the technology and resides deep within negative mindsets.

There are loads of other things for voters to think about. These include words and behaviours that have served to jeopardise electability. Get past that and this country’s embarrassing digital lag needs to be among the top tier issues for decisive consideration.

Those election observers

Having decided that more good than harm can come from the presence of more than one international election observer group for our April 28 elections, Prime Minister Young has now invited the Commonwealth and the Carter Center to play such a role alongside original Caricom invitees.

Caricom has already replied positively to the request, and I understand a process is already in train to constitute a team, develop its terms of reference, and initiate deployment at the collective expense of member states – as is usually the case.

Unfortunately, publicly expressed doubt as to the bona fides of Caricom involvement has had the effect of devaluing an act of regional fraternalism, denying the remarkable nature of the grouping’s past record, and fictionalising the extent to which any individual Caricom official is typically and influentially engaged in execution of the mandates of observer groups.

There are other reasons advanced in the public domain which, for me, are a source of much shame, and will not be addressed on this forum today.

The suggestion of potentially dishonourable conduct also casts defamatory slurs on past missions that have performed creditably in numerous Caribbean countries, including here, over the years. Only last week, associate member state Curacao hosted a Caricom electoral mission.

There are several other countries that have activated such support including those that have experienced highly problematic processes and outcomes.

It is a service Caricom has provided since 1997 when an observer group was deployed in Guyana.

Like other international guidelines for such teams, the main duties involve observing the entire process including the prevailing socio-political climate, monitoring election day activities, and observing and assessing the political environment following declaration of results.

Commonwealth guidelines developed in 1991 and revised in 2018 (it has been conducting observer missions since 1967) also make specific reference to a variety of rights and responsibilities.

These include scrutiny of the registration, nominations, and election days processes, the conduct of campaigns, and the behaviour of contestants and their parties. There is also a wide spectrum of other responsibilities that have to do with the communication of political messages, the neutrality of officials, ballot secrecy, and the conditions under which votes are cast with a special eye on the elderly and disabled.

Unlike Caricom where member states are invited to submit nominees for participation – usually elections officials and people with observer experience - the Commonwealth accesses a wider variety of skills directly, and mostly without reference to the governments of countries to which team members belong.

Additionally, a request for a Commonwealth mission, according to the revised guidelines of 2018 “can emanate from a variety of official sources, including the Head of Government, Minister of Foreign Affairs or Chair of the election management body.” The Commonwealth Secretariat secures the funding for the exercise.

In the case of the Carter Center, once invited, its team “must be generally welcomed by the major political forces and/or accredited by electoral authorities” in order to proceed.

These are just three of several creditable sources of international vigilance over electoral processes. There are others including the Organisation of American States (OAS) that have been active in the region.

One of the other things observer groups do is to examine the degree to which a wide variety of stakeholders including political parties, business, labour, NGOs, and the media, play roles in promoting and monitoring sound electoral practices.

I am spending some time on the role of election observers and the bodies that manage them because it is important that people understand what to expect from them. I have been an advocate for a greater role for media in providing at least basic guidance on such matters and not remain content to regurgitate outlandish claims.

There is also a role for academia in this and I am noting the paucity of adequately researched material and general instruction even on the work of observer groups.

Additionally, following our 2020 elections, there were three main recommendations from the Caricom group. These include campaign finance reform, digital transformation (!), and accessibility issues regarding the elderly and disabled.

The “observer” role thus extends to domestic spaces in the years between elections. Civil society vigilance is equally important to help guard the guards. But it’s a duty we citizens and ordinary folk all appear to have abandoned.

 

*Wesley Gibbings has covered numerous regional elections and trained journalists on election coverage throughout the Caribbean and in Fiji and served as a Commonwealth observer in Sierra Leone in 2023. He has also co-edited a manual for Caribbean journalists on coverage of elections.

Our Immigration Story

*First published in the T&T Guardian on March 19, 2025

By the time this is published, the country would have already entered a fresh and irresistible phase of intrigue, confusion, and general bacchanal as the natural outcome of another election season.

All of this is being packaged against the backdrop of current concerns about immigration practice and malpractice on the part of others. There has been no shortage of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cheering and jeering in some cases.

I have however noted repeatedly that on this issue we, as a nation of migrants, can be described as both subjects and objects – victims and perpetrators.

The awkward management of Venezuelan and other migrant challenges, the general lack of public and even official awareness of the language of orderly migration, and the pervasive presence of xenophobic sentiment, even as political ammunition - “close de borders, close de borders” - all point to an unsatisfactory state of affairs at several domestic levels.

This inconveniently points to matters transcendental of occupation of political office. The three cases I reference today actually span political administrations. Electoral preference appears irrelevant. It has not mattered much who has been prime minister or line minister.

Indeed, the most significant areas of dysfunction and failure have defied the complexion of political office. Such issues earn only passing mention in election manifestoes and even more superficial reference on the hustings.

What, for instance, are the feelings of politicians about the fact that immigration practice appears to routinely defy the spirit of international conventions, domestic legislation, and basic principles of humane state conduct?

It’s discomfiting when you think about it. Our official posture on immigration, as expressed in administrative practice, is in fact not vastly different from what obtains in some other parts of the world where visas and other entry and resident rights are being deployed as tools of reward and punishment.

Here now are three examples of our own problematic approaches. The first is young creative, Omar Jarra, 26, who came to this country as a child with his father, Gambian medical consultant, Dr Ebrima Jarra. Omar was himself born in The Gambia.

Since the death of his father in 2013, he has been the victim of a bureaucratic maze that has left him, in the words of an online petition on his case, “without legal recognition” in the country.

I have met him several times and admire his outstanding work in drama and song but only Saturday came across the petition in support of his appeal to escape “statelessness.”

The fine details of his plight will require more space, but you can view the entire story in the Change.org campaign bearing the banner ‘Justice for Omar Jarra: End Statelessness & Bureaucratic Negligence.’

There are, of course, technical details to traverse – but certainly not more than a decade’s worth of paper pushing! What about the “processing” of his case should take this long?

Even so, this is less time than my second example which concerns a Guyana-born widow – her husband was a Trinidadian - who has been resident in this country for over 40 years and is yet to acquire full citizenship despite her best efforts.

Her adult children were all born here, she owns property, pays taxes, votes, and considers T&T her home. What takes decades to provide a proper response to such an application? How many pages constitute such an exercise? What is the size of her file?

Finally, and painfully, I have been withholding public exposure of the travails of highly decorated Guyana-born Caribbean journalist and professional mentor Rickey Singh.

The full story of his journey to eventual, shameful rejection by this country in the late stages of his life will someday be fully disclosed.

Not by him, because the once prolific writer/editor/press freedom advocate has been silenced by illness for some time now. But he spent the pandemic period languishing at the hands of administrative indifference in T&T and is now in Barbados in poor health.

Now, there are few other public figures in our region who have promoted the idea of a single Caribbean space as Rickey has over decades. In the end, the conditions to accommodate him here simply did not exist. We failed him and what he stands for.

In Omar’s “Innocence Proclamation” – penned as an addendum to his online petition - he speaks of an “end to bureaucratic negligence and statelessness.”

This, he contends, “is about the systemic oppression of the stateless, the displaced, and the wrongfully accused. It is about reclaiming human dignity and ensuring that no one is left without a name, a home, or a future.”

Are we prepared to leave it at that?

 

Caricom’s communication gap

Bear with me for this circuitous, but I think necessary, approach to addressing what is being dismissed by too many as an elementary issue regarding effective communication and the effort to manage the current barrage of challenges to Caribbean survivability.

Make no mistake about it, among the several features of the current global environment, dominated by superpower extortion and coercion, is the prospective dismantling of multilateralism and collective action as solutions to developmental needs.

Look today at where countries have long been rallying to the cause of shared resources and vision and witness the unravelling impacts. The challenges are nothing new but have intensified in recent times everywhere you turn.

Caricom’s longstanding embrace of open regionalism (maintaining a strong core while pragmatically embracing external opportunities) as a coping mechanism involving small, vulnerable states has predisposed its constituents to generally elastic approaches to changing external conditions.

In the process, and as part of the accompanying perils, anomalous global and hemispheric alignments have often proven disruptive. There is thus understandable room to agree to disagree on some things.

If it’s of any comfort, this is neither something unique to us nor new to integration movements wherever you find them. But the astute management of information flows is a constant, pervasive, mitigating requirement.

For us, in this small space and constantly confronted by questions of sustainability, there is a much more urgent need to ensure that conditions exist for sustained joint endeavour and that the populations involved are a knowledgeable part of it.

In the context of its indispensability to the region and given the importance of cohesive approaches to developmental demands, there have been successive examinations over the years of the work of the Caricom Secretariat as administrative centre of the integration project.

A few adjustments have followed, but insufficient to achieve the level of modernity, responsiveness, and leadership required under demanding circumstances.

As explained earlier, this is a lengthy introduction to the single point of effective communication as an institutional imperative indicative of the vital connection between the integration process and the people for whom it has been designed.

For example, it took a full week for the communiqué emerging from the Caricom summit in Barbados between February 19 and 21, to reach media and other interested parties.

By the time the document reached us, foreign ministers and other officials were scrambling to address several new and emerging issues. These included the Cuban medics and US visa threats on Caribbean officials, the cessation of Venezuelan oil licences, and that country’s incursion into Guyanese marine territory.

The outcome has been that some critical features of the belatedly released conference communiqué became lost in the immediate news agenda.

There has since been nothing to remind us of the continuing relevance of a few key points considered at the summit. Yes, there is a role for media and others in this and some of this has already occurred – Haiti, for example - but to focus on this responsibility would be to miss a major point.

Believe me, I am aware of the process to distil the proceedings of such meetings into a single, concise, publicly chewable document. I have been there myself.

Such an exercise must simultaneously meet the criteria of precision and timeliness and generate minimum discomfort among sensitive, self-aware hosts, participants who lead countries, their official contingents, and the numerous bureaucrats charged with ensuring that countries are not left angry, confused, or dissatisfied.

However, as has been the most recent case, the main purpose of such communication is too often lost in a maze of political and bureaucratic behaviours.

It must occur to all concerned that particularly in the current geo-political environment some principal elements of public communication need to be more urgently met.

This is why, in almost all other groupings of this kind, prompt accounts of discussions held, and decisions made are considered as almost important as the deliberations themselves, with communication teams forming an integral part of the proceedings.

Should the latter not be the case, information and communication departments become little more than post offices for dispatch. Resultingly, in the modern era, such a responsibility can be easily displaced by social media algorithm, propaganda, parochialism, and misinformation.

However, if from the start media are thought of as a needless, routinised bother and nuisance – as now seems to be the case - then all concerned should be prepared to confront the fallout.

Just a little advice.