There’s some­thing in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics called an “Oc­to­ber sur­prise”, which refers to an event that could in­flu­ence the out­come of an elec­tion. It’s named for the month of Oc­to­ber, the height of the cam­paign pe­ri­od, when the re­lease of neg­a­tive in­for­ma­tion could de­rail the ef­forts of a can­di­date or an en­tire par­ty. The rev­e­la­tion could be the work of an in­de­pen­dent body or de­lib­er­ate­ly timed by a po­lit­i­cal ri­val.

With lo­cal elec­tions just around the cor­ner, Trin­bag­on­ian vot­ers wit­nessed a lo­cal Oc­to­ber sur­prise with the pub­li­ca­tion of Mindf***: Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca and the Plot to Break Amer­i­ca. It’s the book writ­ten by Christo­pher Wylie, a for­mer em­ploy­ee who ex­posed their in­volve­ment in the unau­tho­rised gath­er­ing of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion from so­cial me­dia users for use in po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns. He be­came the pub­lic face of the scan­dal and, on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions through­out 2018, was called to tes­ti­fy be­fore in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tees in the US and the UK. It was dur­ing one of these hear­ings that Mr Wylie men­tioned that the gov­ern­ment of T&T, which at the time was the un­der the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, hired the ser­vices of Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca (CA) in the lead-up to the 2015 elec­tions. Who would have thought that tiny T&T would find it­self cen­tre stage in a glob­al con­tro­ver­sy.

Fast-for­ward to the press con­fer­ence held two weeks ago by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young. Armed with a copy of Mr Wylie’s book, and a few choice quotes, he paint­ed what he de­scribed was a dis­turb­ing pic­ture, one that all cit­i­zens should be grave­ly con­cerned about. Ac­cord­ing to the book, the meth­ods that were used by CA in the Amer­i­can (2016) elec­tion were first im­ple­ment­ed in Trinidad by its par­ent com­pa­ny, Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lab­o­ra­to­ries (SCL). It should be not­ed that Mr Wylie’s re­count­ing of the work re­gard­ing T&T, or sim­ply the “Trinidad project” as he calls it, is on­ly a small part of his book. But he does de­scribe it in florid and, at times, fright­en­ing ways.

As Min­is­ter Young read quotes, he ap­peared in­dig­nant in how we were used as guinea pigs, be­com­ing the first ca­su­al­ties of a dig­i­tal con­quest by tech­nol­o­gy-wield­ing mer­ce­nar­ies in ser­vice to our own gov­ern­ment. But as alarm­ing as this nar­ra­tive may be, Mr Young can’t de­ny that it al­so ben­e­fits the PNM’s re-elec­tion cam­paign. Whether it’s true or not, this has less to do with a vi­o­la­tion of our pri­va­cy, which iron­i­cal­ly the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al once said that we have no im­plic­it right to it, and more to do with por­tray­ing the UNC as a par­ty that is will­ing to com­mit in­sid­i­ous acts to win an elec­tion. Now, if this sounds fa­mil­iar, it’s be­cause we’ve heard it be­fore. The PNM’s harp­ing on the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca scan­dal feels like a re­peat of the base­less bawl­ball we’ve come to know as “Email­gate”.

When Dr Row­ley, then the leader of the op­po­si­tion, re­vealed that in­fa­mous col­lec­tion of elec­tron­ic cor­re­spon­dence, it wasn’t out of a sense of pa­tri­ot­ic du­ty. On the con­trary, it was a cal­cu­lat­ed act in an at­tempt to slan­der the Peo­ples’ Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment un­der the pro­tec­tion of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege. It’s a trav­es­ty how many man-hours and tax­pay­er dol­lars were wast­ed in or­der to prove some­thing didn’t ex­ist! And just when we thought that chap­ter was fi­nal­ly closed, the PNM is again pre­sent­ing the coun­try with se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions that are ei­ther thin on specifics or dif­fi­cult to ver­i­fy.

With­out dis­cussing the meth­ods that were em­ployed by SCL/CA in da­ta col­lect­ing and user in­flu­enc­ing, the fact is that Mr Wylie’s ac­count lacks sub­stance. Re­mem­ber, his book is about the Amer­i­can elec­tion, and names peo­ple, places, and sit­u­a­tions as it per­tains to that event. How­ev­er, when it comes to such in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the “Trinidad project” – there’s none. And… chances are… we may nev­er get any. De­spite the po­lice ser­vice’s launch­ing of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion (yay, an­oth­er one!) and the co­or­di­na­tion with lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Mr Wylie, he is un­der no oblig­a­tion to of­fer ev­i­dence. Ini­tial­ly, he did ex­press a will­ing­ness to come to Trinidad and tes­ti­fy, but that no longer seems like­ly as, ac­cord­ing to the AG, he has sup­pos­ed­ly re­ceived threats to his life from mem­bers of the UNC.

But let’s say for a mo­ment that he does show up, be it in per­son or via video-link… does he have any phys­i­cal proof – com­pa­ny emails, of­fi­cial tran­scripts, in­ter­nal mem­os – to back up his claims of col­lu­sion? Or are we just sup­posed to take his word for it? Even then, since our gov­ern­ment is con­cerned with ad­her­ing to “nat­ur­al jus­tice” (their ra­tio­nale for with­hold­ing the re­lease of the Dar­ryl Smith Re­port), will rep­re­sen­ta­tives from SCL/CA be in­vit­ed to re­fute Mr Wylie’s al­le­ga­tions? Per­son­al­ly, I wouldn’t hold my breath for ei­ther one. This isn’t about the search for truth or to pre­vent some­thing like this from hap­pen­ing again. Af­ter all, it’s been over a year since our coun­try was first men­tioned in the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca scan­dal, dur­ing which noth­ing was done. But the re­lease of Mr Wylie’s book has pre­sent­ed the PNM with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the UNC, es­sen­tial­ly repli­cat­ing the ef­fects of Email­gate. That means they’ll prob­a­bly drag out this “Oc­to­ber sur­prise” till the gen­er­al elec­tions next year.

Then again, when it comes to our pol­i­tics, noth­ing should sur­prise us any­more.