Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 05, 2019 News
Alliance for Change (AFC) Chairman and Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, has said that the hiring of the US lobbying firm, Mercury Public Affairs LLC, by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) spells bad news for Guyana’s democracy.
His assertion comes in anticipation of the first hearings by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on the No Confidence cases, on May 9-10. The judgments which will follow that court’s deliberation on those cases will decide whether Guyana should head to early elections.
The PPP hired Mercury for services, effective from March 5 to June 5, 2019. The date of signing for the contract, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo had said, was in anticipation of Guyana being faced by a constitutional crisis – the 90-day deadline set, if the No-Confidence motion had been passed on December 21, 2018.
Of the firm, Jagdeo reportedly said, “This is how American policy is shaped and the most effective way to counter APNU/AFC misrepresentation and deceit.”
The expected services, according to the contract, include arranging meetings between the party’s executive branch and the Congress of the United States, the Organisation of American States, which links
in connection with issues relating to the anticipated general and regional elections to take place in Guyana.
During a press conference on Friday last, Ramjattan said, of the hire, “It is not for lobbying services for free and fair elections in Guyana.”
His comment was made in response to a question posed to him about Jagdeo suggesting that Guyana is experiencing a surge in violent crime.
Ramjattan said that Jagdeo is making up issues about crime to divert from the “mischief that he has with Mercury and Facebook in relation to that alleged $34M that he says he paid for hire”.
The Public Security Minister compared Mercury, to Cambridge Analytica, a former British political consulting firm that, in 2018, harvested the personal data of millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their consent and used it for political purposes.
Ramjattan supplied Carole Cadwalladr as a source of information, a British Investigative Journalist for The Guardian and The Observer, who rose to international prominence in 2018 when she exposed the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
According to The Guardian, testimonies from Cambridge Analytica directors, Facebook executives and dozens of expert witnesses were conducted, to compile a report which found that information was used “to profile and target them with political messages and misinformation, without their knowledge or consent.”
That investigation was prompted by reports made by Cadwalladr in The Observer, from the account of a whistleblower who worked as a research director at Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie. Wylie leaked information about the firm’s use of the personal data of millions of people.
Damian Collins, the MP who led a British parliamentary investigation into online disinformation, told CNN last year that a British investigation found evidence that the data had been accessed from Russia and other countries.
It is alleged that the information was used to target US voters during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign, while a whistleblower has claimed the firm had links to pro-Brexit campaigners.
Cadwalladr wrote and did a TED talk last month, called “Social media is a threat to democracy”. She has written about how the data that was harvested was used during the US election campaign and BREXIT election season to spread misinformation and fearmongering to the electorate.
Mercury has been implicated in a scheme to hide that alleged foreign influence peddling in the American 2016 elections. Mercury has also been described in the US media as being the “go-to lobbying shop for clients looking to get in the administration’s good graces.”
During his press conference, Kaieteur News had challenged Jagdeo to say how his party could express the desire to have “free and fair elections” but still hire a firm that was part of a plot to do the opposite in America.
Jagdeo had disclosed that he is aware of the negative reports on the firm, but his main concern is that it is bipartisan and that it is effective in getting the party’s message to the leaders of the US Government. The PPP has paid the company US$150,000 thus far for its services in this regard, he said.
He said that the contract will be reviewed before it is renewed.
According to two news sites, the Associated Press (AP) and The Hill, prosecutors with the US Justice Department have been interviewing witnesses about the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs, the AP reported. The probe stems from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
The Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs came under scrutiny for their work to benefit a pro-Russia party in Ukraine. They were accused in the grand jury indictment of being paid millions of dollars through offshore bank accounts set up by Manafort and Gates.
The firms didn’t register the lobbyists doing work for Ukraine as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act while doing that lobbying. The firms have since registered lobbyists under the act, according to the AP, and said they relied on outside counsel in making their decisions.
Mercury spokesman, Michael McKeon, told the AP that the firm has “always welcomed any inquiry since we acted appropriately at every step of the process, including hiring a top lawyer in Washington and following his advice.”
“We’ll continue to cooperate as we have previously,” he added.
Ramjattan said that the alleged issues of interference by such firms in elections indicate bad news for Guyana’s democracy. He said that misinformation will be spread on social media, similar to misinformation that Cadwalladr wrote about.
In her TED talk, she had talked about British voters being deceived by the “lie that Turkey was going to join the EU, accompanied by the suggestion that its population of 76 million people would promptly emigrate to current member states.”
“We would not see the advertisements on Facebook,” said Ramjattan. He said he worries that similar racially charged campaigns may be used by the PPP during the next election season.”So he is going to get that sliver of voters whom he feels are persuadables, and direct personalised ads to them that we will not see so we can’t counter.
And these ads are going to be brutally racial ads and all manner of things he plans to do. That is what Mercury is a boss for.”
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