This archive report was first published on 18 July 2019.
Published on July 18, 2019, a Jubilee Party official has defended the party's engagement with Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, in the 2017 general election.
Jubilee Party secretary-general Raphael Tuju told The Nation that the party had nothing to apologise for in its engagement with SCL, saying it was common practice for campaigns to hire consultants to bridge capacity gaps.
"Most serious campaigns hire consultants and experts to bridge capacity gaps that they may have. We have nothing to apologise for," Tuju said.
However, the party's engagement with SCL has been marred by allegations of dirty tricks, including data mining and spreading misinformation. Former Cambridge Analytica managing director Mark Turnbull told CNBC that the firm had rebranded the Jubilee Party twice, written their manifesto, and conducted two rounds of 50,000 participant surveys.
Cambridge Analytica was exposed by an undercover Channel 4 News investigation last year, which caught company bosses boasting of dirty tricks and influencing elections across the world.
President Uhuru Kenyatta's opponent, Raila Odinga, was smeared with a series of viral videos, including one notoriously depicting apocalyptic scenes if he were to win. Odinga accused the firm of tarnishing his name and threatened to sue it and Facebook for "devilish propaganda".
"I have been a victim of fake news. The international community has failed to rein them in," Odinga told participants in an address at Chatham House in the UK.
