Spectre of Cambridge Analytica

THE EDITOR: The spectre of Cambridge Analytica is being conjured up a year before the general election by the incumbent accusing the party not in power of somehow disenfranchising the supporters of the party in power.

Rum and roti and standpipe politics have evolved over time to more sophisticated forms of the same essence – how to make voters give enough votes to the political parties to get them into power or keep them there.

The big rallies have replaced the street corner meetings as big DJs, sound companies, advertising firms, and election consultants, etc are paid huge amounts by all parties to try and gain enough seats to form the government.

Cambridge Analytica is just the latest evolution of election manipulating “consultants.”

The ONR used American PR firms with mega-advertising blitzes in its campaign in 1981.

The much-touted PNM “election machinery” largely relied on “bring out the vote” election day organisation for bringing every last granny or ole man to the polling stations. At least until 1981 or later.

In 2010 the foreign consultants also began to be more visible in the PNM campaigns. And in 2015, some were even introduced on the platform at Woodford Square.

The UNC has been using its VIM surveys to try and estimate how many voters will vote for the party prior to election day. Scores of “activists” are paid to visit electors and try to get them to say who they intended to vote for.

The UNC even tried to match the PNM election day get-out-the-vote machinery. And on polling day scores of paid “election agents” were deployed to bring information out of the polling stations so that a guestimate of how many votes the party had in “the bag” could be made almost every hour.

Walkabouts became a big part of election campaigns from the 1986 election and voter polling by party supporters or professional pollsters was included.

All of these vote-anticipating methods have become a conduit for the spending of huge sums of money on “foot soldiers” with clipboards and forms trying to identify who voting for whom. Supporters are even paid to walk with candidates.

This evolved into focus groups and data mining and micro targeting methods refined by Cambridge Analytica.

Behind all of this is the concept of treating electors as vote banks for either of the so-called major parties.

All the big parties or big-money parties employ various levels of technology for influencing and manipulating voter behaviour simply to get into or hold on to power; not to represent the interests of the voters.

They all now use international “consultants” who use the same IT methods that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL or SCL Elections improved on to try and achieve the same ends.

SCL has gone even further in allegedly attempting to manipulate election outcomes in the Caribbean for profit since 2009 in St Kitts-Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and here in TT, according to information unearthed since Chris Whylie’s whistle-blowing. It even had UK government contracts in 2008.

The manipulation of voters is big business and a source of profit for the companies specialising in this area of behaviour control.

This is one of the tools to maintain the PNM-UNC political monopoly and the illusion of representative democracy, which is really the rule of the richest and most powerful parasitic oligarchy over the majority of the society.

Political parties and their financiers spend big money to capture the prize of state power. In the final analysis, campaign finance reform will not eliminate this huge spending by all political parties and their financiers.

But voters must demand an end to the manipulation and demand their right to an informed vote and really free and fair elections and the right to participate in decision-making in all matters that affect them and not leave governance to the political parties of the parasitic oligarchy.

CLYDE WEATHERHEAD

via e-mail