by Renu­ka Singh

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi cleared Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith of any con­nec­tion to the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca mat­ter.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, speak­ing at the PNM’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion meet­ing at Sig­na­ture Hall, Ch­agua­nas, last night, read out the de­tails of a let­ter writ­ten to him by the AG which ef­fec­tive­ly cleared Grif­fith.

Row­ley al­so won­dered whether for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­lowed a for­eign com­pa­ny to use pri­vate in­for­ma­tion of pri­vate cit­i­zens.

“I have been ig­nor­ing those on the oth­er side be­cause we have too much to do, “ he said.

Hav­ing said that, Row­ley ref­er­enced a state­ment made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum about the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Hold­ing up the book, Mindf*** by for­mer Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca em­ploy­ee Christo­pher Wylie, Row­ley said de­spite Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s dis­mis­sive at­ti­tude, the peo­ple’s pri­va­cy need­ed to be pro­tect­ed.

“This has noth­ing to do with an elec­tion, this has every­thing to do with a prob­lem that start­ed in 2010,” he said. “This is high crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Row­ley said Wylie was forced to go qui­et be­cause of threats made by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. He said while Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed the mat­ter as “who the hell cares”, the British Par­lia­ment had dis­cussed the same mat­ter.

He read ex­cerpts from the book which dealt with at­tempts to sup­press the black votes while build­ing a data­base on oth­er vot­ers to en­sure con­tin­ued sup­port.

“All I’ve read out is the pro­ceed­ings un­der penal­ty of jail in the British par­lia­ment,” Row­ley said.

He sin­gled out Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal for say­ing that Wylie need­ed to pro­duce proof of pay­ment to show links to the UNC. Row­ley al­so re­vealed some fi­nan­cial de­tails of the UNC’s favoured ad­ver­tis­er, Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing, an agency led by Ernie Ross.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, Ross was grant­ed a $13 mil­lion con­tract to ad­ver­tise for the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA).

“What did the CDA get for $13 mil­lion to Ross?” he asked.

He said the con­tracts to Ross for CDA ad­ver­tis­ing went from $250,000 to mil­lions of dol­lars.

“You un­der­stand the wood the tax­pay­ers get­ting in this coun­try?” Row­ley asked.

He al­so went through the ris­ing cost of Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

“Over the pe­ri­od 2013 to 2015, a record of $915 mil­lion was spent on 46 cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty projects re­lat­ing to road works, play­grounds. Ad­ver­tis­ing and brand­ing cost $493 mil­lion, “ he said, adding that Ross had al­so ben­e­fit­ted from that ad­ver­tis­ing push.

Row­ley said he is send­ing the files about the NGC spend­ing to the po­lice.