The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Former PLP cabinet minister Loftus Roker (he who gave us the cheeky moniker “Rokerpure” for brackish drinking water) recently expressed his disdain over the fact that outside observers were coming to invigilate our election next month.

He chided our leaders for having no confidence in Bahamians and wondered if so-called first world countries like the UK and the US (among others) would allow these observers to monitor their elections. His implication was that they would not.

I wish to set him straight in at least two instances over the last election cycles in Britain and in our next door neighbour, Candidate Donald Trump barked to the world that he was expecting a rigged election and so it came as no surprise that outside observers were welcomed.

The publication US News and World Report published an article last year confirming that indeed the US election was monitored by two separate outside groups and not a whisper was heard from anyone.

Officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have been observing US elections since 2002 and last year, for the first time a delegation was sent from the Organization of American States (OAS) to witness the presidential election.

The OSCE has an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights through which they observe elections to assess the extent to which electoral processes respect fundamental freedoms and are characterized by equality, universality, political pluralism, confidence, transparency and accountability.

In their 2015 general elections Britain accepted the OSCE along with 170 other foreign observers. The British Electoral Commission, which approved their presence there, said that it was to ensure that the vote is carried out in accordance with international standards.

Oversight isn’t always about catching fraud. Sometimes it’s about improving best practices and, just as important, confirming an atmosphere of transparency. And if you want enforcement of election laws, who better to do so than outsiders who supposedly don’t have a horse in the race.

We could have done with an OSCE mission here to monitor the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner Sherlyn Hall whose shenanigans about what some women wore when they registered to vote was surely an infringement of their basic human rights as citizens of the Bahamas.

So my good friend Loftus Roker should stand corrected and I wish to advise him to re-boot his thinking to the 21st century.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

April 19, 2017.