UNC to blank Cambridge Analytica hearing

THE Opposition United National Congress (UNC) will not sit on or testify before the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on National Security if it probes allegations of data mining locally by UK-based firm Cambridge Analytica, Aggregate IQ and the Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL.)

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley at a post-Cabinet briefing on April 6 promised a parliamentary debate and a JSC probe into alleged interference in this country’s 2010 general election by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm suspected of election manipulation in the United States, Caribbean and Africa, that he sought to link to “intense personal attacks” against him in 2010.

Firm employee-turned-whistle-blower, Christopher Wylie, 28, testified to the British Parliament of how the firm had used people’s private details on Facebook to help elect US President Donald Trump, illegally assisted the Brexit lobby and interfered in elections in Kenya, India and elsewhere. Britain’s Channel Four Television had secretly filmed the firm’s then CEO Alexander Nix offering to use Ukrainian prostitutes and cash bribes to sway Sri Lanka’s general election. TT was named among countries in which the company had been paid to intervene.

In a statement yesterday, the UNC said Attorney General (AG) Faris Al-Rawi’s call for this probe is a political witch hunt and pappyshow, to which the UNC would not subject itself. The UNC called the probe a waste of state resources and an attempt to name and shame former government members by faulty evidence and reckless statements.

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