EDITORIAL - Towards a digital democracy

Time was when a local political meeting was an occasion for a night of socialising with others of identical partisan persuasion – only infrequently did the stalwarts of either of the two main political parties attend the public meetings of the other. This apart, it was viewed largely as an opportunity for defamatory entertainment, and for education as to the future plans of the party for the host constituency and the country. It would be at these gatherings too that the candidates would be most accessible, whether for a drink, to be asked a favour or to assist financially with some outstanding obligation of the elector. 

 

However, given the advances in technology, such occasions are becoming rarer and rarer. Now, a candidate and party can reach and more directly engage a wider audience through the available social media. Nowhere is this more famously a reality than in the United States, where the US President Donald Trump has turned Twitter into his preferred mode of communication with the US citizens. By an early morning or late night tweet, they can learn of his immediate and unfiltered views of the world in fewer than 140 characters, sometimes with the careless schoolboy errors such as “lead” for “led”, “loose” for “lose” and even “unpresidented” for unprecedented. 

 

Regionally, we also have officers of the state who have availed themselves of cyber-communication with their publics. We learnt recently that the Prime Minister of St Lucia maintains a Facebook account when he expressed regret there at a number of murders that were perpetrated last weekend. He shares this social media presence with some local politicians, perhaps none more well-known in recent times than the Member of Parliament for St Lucy, and the Honourable Minister of Housing and Lands, Mr Denis Kellman.  

 

Mr Kellman has managed to incur the wrath of more than a few with his provocative online comments as to the superior potability of local water over that of imported bottle water; and as to the signal contribution of potholes to reducing the number of road fatalities. 

 

It is ironic that at a time when there are calls to muzzle Mr Kellman’s contributions to social media, there are also calls for the governing administration to be more communicative with its citizenry. It may be then that Mr Kellman’s initiative is one to be imitated by the administration, at least in terms of the medium, if not the nature of the content.

 

It must be noted that this digital revolution in political communication is not all one way. Most media now afford avenues for listeners or readers to voice their reactions to civic issues, whether through the call-in programmes or through the comments section appended to all online news items.

 

Not to be excluded from consideration in this context is the popular Barbados Underground blog that is rarely bereft of partisan political comment on most issues, although the factor of pseudoonymity makes it difficult for the reader to discern whether the views expressed there are those of a majority of the bloggers or merely a plurality.

 

The question that begs asking is whether local political communication will now take place in cyberspace or rather in the conventional locations of Independence Square or Carlisle House car park. Given the local penchant for tradition, it is unlikely that the former will become a reality in the next General Election campaign. However, this does not preclude any party or candidate from availing themselves of this most effective method of communication. 

 

It is to be noted that in the UK, there has been established the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. One of its key targets is that by 2016, all published information and broadcast footage produced in Parliament should be freely available to the public in formats suitable for re-use.