New NDC leader blames Cambridge Analytica for party defeat

by Linda Straker

• NDC says Cambridge Analytica assisted NNP to win 2018 General Election
• New national executive comprises 50% of women
• Political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica worked in 7 countries including Grenada

Newly elected political leader of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Franka Bernardine, without presenting proof, said that the former political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica assisted the ruling New National Party (NNP) to win the 2018 General Election.

In her inaugural address to supporters at a rally on Sunday following the party’s convention where she was elected, Bernardine said that she learnt of the now-defunct political consultancy firm’s involvement in the Grenada election through a friend from Trinidad. “Two or three days after our election last year, I get a call from Trinidad hot, hot about 7 am from a lady who called and said, ‘you ain’t hear the news; it says Cambridge Analytica says the last intervention they made was in Grenada in the Caribbean.”

“I am under no illusion what happened in the last election,” Bernardine said. She failed to win her seat when she contested both the 2013 and 2018 General Elections, and served as the Cabinet Minister for Education as an appointed government senator during the Tillman Thomas administration.

Before her government appointment, Bernardine was the Chairperson of the Civil Society Grouping and was the main spokesperson highlighting matters of concerns on behalf of civil society in the build-up to the 2008 General Election.

Claiming she knows exactly what happened during the last election, Bernardine felt that the people should have taken to streets after the NNP won the 2013 and 2018 landslides. “All manner of fiddling went on but we should have turned around and risen up as a people. They could have never had gotten away with this — in Barbados or Trinidad — they could have jumped out in the streets in the thousands. We have to learn to defend our democracy like that, we cannot just stand up and take we death like sheep,” she said, while the executive on the platform applauded.

The NDC won the 2008 General Election after serving in opposition from 2003, and was governing Grenada for the 2013 General Election but was unable to regain a seat in the Lower House, and repeated the loss in the 2018 General Election. At present, there is no elected opposition in the Lower House of Parliament.

According to documents issued around 2013 from SCL Elections, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, the British political consultancy firm worked in 32 countries across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Regional countries named in the document which is shared on the business news website www.qz.com are Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St Lucia, Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Newly appointed Public Relations Officer Claudette Joseph said that the new national executive of the NDC comprises 50% of women. The elected executive members are:

• Terence Moore – Chairman
• Kennedy Roberts – Deputy Chair
• Franka Bernardine – Party Leader
• Adrian Thomas – Deputy Leader
• Glen Noel – General Secretary
• Belinda Farray – Asst. General Secretary
• Maria Pascal – Asst. General Secretary
• Cindy Henry – Recording Secretary
• Terrisha Fortune – Asst. Recording Secretary
• Merle Byer – Treasurer
• Claudette Joseph – Public Relations Officer
• Ron Redhead – Asst. Public Relations Officer
• Elliot Bishop – Labour Relations
• Lennox Andrews – Floor Member
• Rickelson Scott – Floor Member
• Wendel Sylvester – Floor Member

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