Former President Donald Ramotar yesterday denied that he had hired Cambridge Analytica, the United Kingdom political consulting firm that collapsed in scandal, to help with his 2015 elections campaign after a former company director said that work was done for the party.
The comments by the official were highlighted yesterday by de facto Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo who said that the former president had “invited foreign interference since 2013…to conduct race-based interference” in this country’s “national affairs.”
“I categorically deny that Cambridge Analytica was involved in our campaign in 2015,” Ramotar told Stabroek News yesterday when contacted.
Cambridge Analytica collapsed following a controversy involving the United States (US), the UK and Facebook. It had been revealed that the company, which was hired by US President Donald Trump’s campaign to build targeted ads during the 2016 US election, harvested data from 50 million Facebook users without their consent. The firm’s role in the fiercely contested Brexit referendum in the UK in 2016 also came under scrutiny after whistleblowers revealed that the company worked for the Leave campaign. The company, according to its website, would provide data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organisations worldwide and has provided different services for different clients.
According to various media reports on the content of company documents issued around 2013, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Elections Ltd worked in 32 countries across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. More than 100 election campaigns were reportedly affected.
In his column in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle yesterday, Nagamootoo made reference to an interview in which former business development director for Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser, told of Ramotar’s agreement with her former employer.
“In 2013 SCL Group or Cambridge Analytica first started having discussions with President Ramotar and [was] engaging with the People’s Progressive Party, the President was a part of that party, they conducted the type of political research I talked to you earlier about,” Kaiser told The Red Line in an interview, aired on June 14th last.
“They did a behavioural poll and what they called a target audience analysis (TAA,) and that is large scale national research where they would have done those qualitative focus groups and quantitative surveys, to understand as much as possible about the population; their policies, cultures, affiliations, the way that they do their decision making and the way that citizens engage in society. That allowed them to build an entire election strategy based on what they researched,” she added.
The former director of business development for SCL was at the time discussing how her former company used personal data harvesting for political advertising globally.
In the context of Guyana, the show’s host pointed out that while everyone has their eyes on Guyana’s “imploding neighbours,” this country “is entering its own new phase, one that is likely to make it one of the world’s next big geopolitical flashpoints.”
Kaiser made reference to work done by her company in Trinidad and Tobago back in 2010, and how those works helped the United National Congress defeat the People’s National Movement.
“Trinidad and Tobago has two main cultural groups; they have their own political parties, traditions and cultures. They did a national survey to understand the behaviour, attitudes and interests of the political parties. You first collect data, research and polling and then develop a strategy on how to engage the people…,” Kaiser explained.
Her company, she said, conducted similar research here in 2013 and in 2014 gave the findings of that research to Ramotar.
However, according to Ramotar, “They played absolutely no role in our campaign.”
