EDITOR, The Tribune.

When will our television broadcasters invest in the modern bells and whistles and state-of-the-art technology needed to give their viewers 21st century election night coverage?

As the nation retired to watch the election returns, we got the usual cacophony from talking heads parroting the sterile dribs and drabs from the bean counters at the parliamentary registrar’s office.

There was only a slight pretense at electronic gadgetry, graphs, and constituency maps but absolutely no comparison to elections past. The FNM and PLP campaigns may have rolled out computerised micro-targeting of voters and precision boundary mapping, but for our broadcasters it might as well have been election night 1967 missing only the crackling airwave clutter of the old Zephyr Nassau Sunshine on short wave radios.

Four hours into the coverage on ZNS and the OUR network and not one presenter was willing to call the election. Even after PLP Chairman Bradley Roberts raised the white flag of surrender in a prepared text he read from his cell phone at a deserted party headquarters.

And not even after we got a concession speech of sorts sent over from a stupefied Perry Christie. The election was effectively over yet anchors Darold Miller and Jerome Sawyer et al were too afraid to say so.

Most of their guests provided predictable commentary and the obligatory niceties about the PLP looking inward and rebuilding, or about the great victory for Dr Hubert Minnis and the FNM.

Darold Miller provided the biggest bark of the night when he correctly wondered why Perry Christie had sent over a prepared statement of concession, instead of doing what the vanquished have done for decades. They summon their inner courage to face the cameras and the microphones and give a concession speech.

Some such speeches have been given through tears. Others have been brilliant displays of class and statesmanship. But there was no graceful exit for our former fearless leader, Perry Christie, who had no trouble flashing his vulgar middle finger for the cameras, who was never shy about tapping his 73-year-old feet in a Junkanoo shuffle. On election night we were not important enough for him to look us in the eye and concede.

He weaseled out and sent over a statement instead. No matter how much it might have pained him to do so, a true gladiator always leaves the arena with his head held high.

Darold Miller grasped this. But not Patty Roker, an invited panelist brought on presumably to add background and perspective to the evening’s goings-on. She was shell-shocked by the grenades that were exploding all around her. She became defensive and shuffled paper. She wouldn’t support the custom of an in-person concession.

Ms Roker was either stunned by the results or she was simply following the PLP party line. Instead of providing the kind of thoughtful, reflective analysis befitting her role as historian, culturist and radio chat show host, she instead gave us PLP spin.

By the end of the night, Ms Roker’s performance was nauseating. She was the apologist in chief for the very habits of the PLP old guard and its commandants Christie and Roberts that were being repudiated in front of her eyes.

After the Bahamian people had spoken with their votes, instead of listening and taking notes, Roker took a different tack. Like an old school marm she appeared to chastise voters for spanking the PLP and essentially implied the voters across the land were making a mistake. To Roker, the PLP didn’t deserve the licks that were being inflicted on them by a bunch of ingrates.

She was pained to salute the FNM on their stunning victory. Instead, she could only muster that the voters must go out and get a copy of the FNM manifesto, read it and then hold the new government to it.

There was nothing wrong with that, of course, save for the fact that she was not prepared to give Jack his jacket by acknowledging that the people had just dropped serious licks on her beloved PLP.

The first time a sitting Bahamian Prime Minister lost his seat in a general election. The young David (aka Reece Chipman) whose grandfather had danced in a Junkanoo rush out with Goliath from Centreville had felled the biggest giant on the battlefield.

Mr Miller also couldn’t immediately grasp the gravity of the victory or was restrained from doing so by who we don’t know. He proved himself oblivious to the digital currency of the 21st century. We witnessed the first election where social media had played an outsized role and Darold couldn’t talk the talk or walk the walk.

Young people were fully engaged in the entire election night process and they sent memes and digital parodies of politicians interspersed with some actual news around the Internet at breathtaking speed. But the data Neanderthal Darold wanted to know what a Twitter hash-tag was after it was announced that his name was trending online, ie plenty, plenty people were talking about him.

Then he launched into his trademark fake righteous indignation to chastise the parties for only offering their manifestos in digital format. In a country where defeated PLP Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald and his policies led us to a D- national reading average, Darold wanted the campaigns to shell out for booklets that probably would never be read.

Ms Roker did not acquit herself well on election night. She was on a panel that was supposed to provide analysis. She should have come on later in the programme alongside like Philip Galanis, a high priest of the PLP who was more measured in his commentary than was she.

Stick with asking the questions Ms Roker, because the ones you tried to answer fell flat.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

May 14, 2017.