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.
