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 Feb­ru­ary 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 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.