2017 goes down in Kenya’s history as the year that not only had presidential election results cancelled, but also marred with irregularities.
NASA leader Raila Odinga complained of the elections, with him even boycotting the October 26, 2017 repeat polls in protest of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission that had conducted the disputed polls.
Cambridge Analytica was accused of aiding President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election.
Channel 4 news has exposed a British Member of the European Parliament Alexandra Phillips who secretly worked for Uhuru’s Jubilee Party in 2017 polls.
Phillips admitted to the media house that she secretly worked for Jubilee.
“I wasn’t working for Jubilee I was employed by Cambridge Analytica who had the contract with Jubilee. I was brought on as a political communications consultant for the Kenya project,” Channel 4 News quotes her as saying.
Phillips was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the South East England constituency at the European Parliament elections of May 2019.
Phillips told Channel 4 News that her work was “so sentitive” that whenever someone asked what she was doing she would respond that she was “a air hostess”.
She is quoted saying that she helped in writing President Uhuru Kenyatta’s speeches and shaping the messaging by State House team.
“I’d be writing the president’s speeches and his talking points for rallies and State House statements. I trained their communications team; they’re all sort of journalists who came together to create a press office. So I had to train them up and daily management of that communications team,” she is quoted as having said.
State House and the Jubilee Party have previously denied that Cambridge Analytica was ever contracted to work in Kenya during the elections.
In response to a similar revelation last year, former Jubilee Party Vice-Chairman David Murathe said that had paid for “branding” in the 2017 presidential election from SCL, affiliate of consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
“They were basically branding and all that but not directly,” Murathe said at the time.
According to Channel 4, Phillips sent them a statement stating that; “In Kenya, I worked as a freelance contractor — focusing on speechwriting – with the team of President Kenyatta, who is a great ally of the UK. The campaigns I worked on promoted peace and national unity in a country that I love dearly.”
She also added that this work was sub-contracted out to her by SCL, which went on to become a different company.
“Out of respect for those whom I served, I will continue to respect the confidentiality agreements that I signed upon accepting the role in Kenya. And I will not be bullied by agenda-driven, guilt-by-association reporting,” Phillips said.
Watch video here Courtesy of Channel 4 news.
