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 per cent 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.