SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James says the Op­po­si­tion leader needs to be very care­ful of dis­miss­ing claims made against her par­ty by Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca (CA) whistle­blow­er, Christo­pher Wylie.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, James said the on­ly way Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can hope to win any elec­tion is by win­ning over un­de­cid­ed vot­ers.

But he said she can­not do that if she does not treat the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca al­le­ga­tions as se­ri­ous.

Ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC’s) Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Mara­bel­la, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the peo­ple on the ground do not care about Wylie’s claims of hav­ing been con­tract­ed by the then-rul­ing Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship in 2013 to col­lect da­ta on cit­i­zens. She and oth­er UNC ex­ec­u­tives have firm­ly de­nied Wylie’s claims. She said cit­i­zens are cry­ing out for jobs and ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties and have no time to fo­cus on the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca al­le­ga­tions and summed up the al­le­ga­tions as an­oth­er email-gate scan­dal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “You know what peo­ple are telling me ‘Who the hell cares? Who the hell re­al­ly cares?’ And the thing is we lost that elec­tion any­how, so what is the big sto­ry and the big news?”

But James said this dis­missal is dan­ger­ous, es­pe­cial­ly with two ma­jor elec­tions loom­ing.

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has to be care­ful to make a dis­tinc­tion be­tween a par­tic­u­lar type of au­di­ence and an­oth­er type of au­di­ence. When you are speak­ing to the al­ready-con­vert­ed, you prob­a­bly can take lib­er­ties with their log­ic, their in­de­pen­dence of mind be­cause they are sup­port­ing you and they are will­ing to sup­port you even in sit­u­a­tions where you can hard­ly de­fend your­self,” James said.

He said the bur­den is on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to de­fend her par­ty and this coun­try’s democ­ra­cy in a  se­ri­ous man­ner.

“Peo­ple are go­ing to say, you were the ones in pow­er, the ac­cu­sa­tion is that you are the ones who au­tho­rised ac­cess to peo­ple’s per­son­al ac­counts and that was a vi­o­la­tion of democ­ra­cy in its purest sense, we have to pro­tect democ­ra­cy, we don’t want you to be dis­mis­sive about it or to be facile in your re­sponse.”

James said the bur­den to pro­tect T&T’s democ­ra­cy falls on each and every politi­cian and no one should be al­lowed to wave away these types of al­le­ga­tions.

He said though, Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be es­pe­cial­ly care­ful as the UNC, un­der her lead­er­ship, has not been suc­cess­ful in an elec­tion since 2010.

“She can’t say that when we com­pare what peo­ple are ask­ing for with what the re­port is re­veal­ing, the fo­cus of the peo­ple is far more im­por­tant than an abuse on the part of a rul­ing par­ty…she may con­tin­ue to hold on to her tra­di­tion­al sup­port base, but she needs more than that sup­port base to win elec­tions of any kind.”

James said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments were un­nec­es­sary and la­belled them a grave po­lit­i­cal mis­take.

“She can­not af­ford to be reck­less giv­en that kind of record and that kind of back­ground be­cause the charges that are made in the re­port by Wylie are very dam­ag­ing, they hit to the very heart of our democ­ra­cy, they speak to an in­va­sion of pri­va­cy.”

He said the un­de­cid­ed vot­ers need to have a firm rea­son to swing in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s favour for her par­ty to have any chance at the polls.