Wes­ley Gib­bings

Among the note­wor­thy de­vel­op­ments aris­ing out of last week’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, and the run-up to it, is the fact that de­spite the pri­or fuss over the need for in­de­pen­dent, in­ter­na­tion­al mon­i­tor­ing of the process, very lit­tle has since been said about the work of two ob­serv­er mis­sions in the coun­try.

Such a short­com­ing has been ob­serv­able across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum in the post-elec­tion phase. In­stead, “we won” and “we lost” have been the two dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives, sig­ni­fied by cheers and tears for which first-past-the-post elec­toral arrange­ments are wide­ly known.

The nu­mer­ous pas­sion­ate pub­lic ap­peals, cor­re­spon­dence, mem­o­ran­da, and meet­ings to en­sure ex­ter­nal mon­i­tor­ing now seem like dis­tant echoes in a fast-flow­ing trib­u­tary of pub­lic com­men­tary and con­tem­pla­tion.

First, the fran­tic calls met by the open re­sis­tance of those in charge, then ac­cep­tance and mut­ed sur­ren­der, to pub­lic slan­der on the pre­sumed pri­mor­dial in­stincts of a Caribbean team.

Then emerged the sup­port of the 56-mem­ber Com­mon­wealth – still, to some, not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “in­ter­na­tion­al” scruti­ny, as if a team from Mal­ta, Do­mini­ca, Ja­maica, Papua New Guinea, Mal­dives, and Guyana, with sup­port from a UK-based sec­re­tari­at, had not met the ba­sic fea­tures of ge­o­graph­i­cal spread.

A larg­er 12-mem­ber Cari­com group com­pris­ing elec­toral of­fi­cials and ex­perts from eight coun­tries did con­cur­rent work. And, by the way, the gov­ern­ment of T&T was not re­spon­si­ble for fi­nanc­ing these ac­tiv­i­ties.

The fo­cus post-elec­tion, so far, has been al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on the con­sti­tut­ing of a new po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion, at­tend­ing to in­ter­nal con­vul­sions, and the chal­lenge of mak­ing good on ex­trav­a­gant promis­es.

In the process, bare­ly con­cealed par­ti­san pos­tur­ing has turned to both open re­vul­sion and gra­tu­itous ap­plause - the agen­da for change con­se­quent­ly lo­cat­ed along a spec­trum of the im­pos­si­ble and the em­i­nent­ly pos­si­ble.

Thank­ful­ly, there are now in­de­pen­dent ex­perts, with no dis­tin­guish­able dogs in the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed race, to dis­sect the de­tails with da­ta and ev­i­dence.

Mean­while, as has been the case in the past, in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers have come, they’re seen, and they have re­port­ed (at least pre­lim­i­nar­i­ly) with some re­minders and guid­ance on get­ting things right the next time around.

I need to re­mind us of at least three is­sues placed on the ta­ble for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Cari­com Ob­serv­er team of 2020 which close­ly align with the ob­ser­va­tions of the Com­mon­wealth team of 2015, and again in 2025.

These in­clude cam­paign fi­nance re­form, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in mat­ters re­lat­ed to elec­tions, and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is­sues re­gard­ing the el­der­ly and dis­abled.

It should not have tak­en COG chair Evarist Bar­to­lo, of Mal­ta, to re­mind us of the 10-year-old rec­om­men­da­tion to “pri­ori­tise this process” of elec­toral cam­paign fi­nance re­form.

For, even at that time, the is­sue was noth­ing new to us. The first re­port of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) ap­point­ed in No­vem­ber 2014 to “pro­pose a leg­isla­tive frame­work to gov­ern the fi­nanc­ing of elec­tion cam­paigns …” had al­ready been sub­mit­ted in 2015.

Three elect­ed MPs of 2025, on both sides of the House, are among the sig­na­to­ries to that 10-year-old re­port which pro­posed, among oth­er things, “lim­its on pri­vate cam­paign fi­nanc­ing of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and can­di­dates in or­der to pro­mote fair com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing elec­tions and re­duce in­cen­tives for cor­rup­tion and un­due in­flu­ence in pol­i­tics.”

The is­sue gained trac­tion for some time, in­clud­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of an ap­pro­pri­ate “in­de­pen­dent and pro­fes­sion­al reg­u­la­to­ry body” to mon­i­tor and con­sid­er sanc­tions for breach­es.

The EBC was favourably con­sid­ered by the JSC, and an amend­ment to the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act was tabled in Par­lia­ment for de­bate in 2020. It in­clud­ed the idea of a Na­tion­al Elec­tion Cam­paign Fund, in part to ad­dress the ques­tion of pri­vate fund­ing and the po­ten­tial for the neg­a­tive im­pacts iden­ti­fied by the 2015 JSC re­port.

It was sug­gest­ed that most ma­jor ac­tors were sup­port­ive of the kinds of re­forms that would not cur­rent­ly have us in a state of con­fu­sion re­gard­ing the iden­ti­ties of “fi­nanciers” of a brief but in­tense elec­tion cam­paign, with vis­i­ble spend in the mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars.

I have sug­gest­ed in the past that the main ben­e­fi­cia­ries of cam­paign spend should al­so be among the en­ti­ties for which manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure is a re­quire­ment. These in­clude both pri­vate and state me­dia—who al­most all earn sub­stan­tial rev­enues from elec­toral cam­paigns.

Mean­while, we have po­lit­i­cal par­ties that built their cam­paigns around the no­tion of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty – key at­trib­ut­es of re­spon­si­ble gov­er­nance – and who now must give leg­isla­tive teeth to their stat­ed com­mit­ment to such val­ues.

It should not re­quire im­par­tial in­ter­na­tion­al mon­i­tors to re­mind us of this. It should hap­pen as a nat­ur­al out­come of po­lit­i­cal in­tent ex­pressed on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form. Let’s see how that goes.