This statement from the ECI came in response to a right to information (RTI) request submitted by Venkatesh Nayak, director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, in which he pointed out that as per procedure outlined in paragraph 1.12, read along with paragraph 7.1.2, of the 2023 edition of the handbook for presiding officers published on the ECI website, the presiding officers should have information about the constituency-wise total number of pre-numbered slips issued by them during both assembly and Lok Sabha elections.

However, the ECI said, “lt is to inform you that information as sought by you is not available in the Commission.” Nayak, an intrepid RTI activist, emphasised that the ECI’s response is “bewildering, to say the least”, as the commission, being the apex election management body, is vested with both Constitutional authority and statutory powers to conduct elections.

“They are required to be in full control of the electoral machinery, and that includes information flows from the constituency level to Nirvachan Sadan through the CEOs, ROs, and election observers. It is unimaginable that the information which I sought has not been reported to the ECI. Even if one were to concede, for the sake of argument, that their reply is accurate, the RTI Act empowers them to request the information from the source where it is available in order to decide whether or not it should be disclosed. At the very least, they can transfer the application to such offices for disposal at the click of a button,” maintained Nayak.

Paragraph 7.1.2 states that “a few minutes before the hour appointed for closing the poll, announce to all those within the limits of the polling station who are waiting to vote that they will be allowed to cast their votes in turn. Distribute slips signed by you in full to all such electors, which should be serially numbered from Serial No. 1 onwards, according to the number of electors standing in the queue at that hour.

“The last elector should be given Slip No. 1, and the next voter in front of him/her should receive Slip No. 2, and so on. Continue the poll even beyond the closing hour until all these electors have cast their votes. Depute police or other staff to ensure that no one is allowed to join the queue after the appointed closing hour. This can be effectively managed if the distribution of slips to all such electors is commenced from the last elector standing in the queue and proceeded backwards towards its head”.

Annexure 52 of the handbook explains that the presiding officer’s diary should contain a variety of details about the polling station, including materials supplied and used, machines supplied and used, polling agents present, voter turnout details, how many were allowed to cast ‘tendered votes’, the number of challenged votes, and the number of votes cast in the polling station during the following time slots: 7-9 am, 9-11 am, 11 am-1 pm, 1-3 pm, and 3-5 pm. The diary should also record the number of slips issued at the close of the polling hour to electors standing in queue.

This information is also recorded in the report of the sector officer, whose format is provided in annexure 6 of the sector officers’ handbook.

According to data from the ECI, the number of registered voters for the state elections held on 20 November 2024 was 97,793,350 (nearly 97.80 crore), with 64,592,508 (about 64.60 crore) individuals casting their votes. In comparison, during the Lok Sabha election, the number of registered voters was 92,890,445 (92.90 core approx.), and the votes cast totalled 56,969,710 (56.97 crore approx.).

Based on these figures, the number of registered voters in the state increased by nearly 50 lakh (49,02,905), while the number of votes cast went up by over 75 lakh (76,22,7980).

The Congress party had, in December 2024, filed a complaint with the ECI, but the latter rejected the charges, stating that the additions were legitimate. The party had also raised concerns about the surge in voter turnout in Maharashtra on polling day, calling for an explanation from the ECI.

In a letter to the ECI, the Congress has also highlighted an “inexplicable increase” in voter turnout between 5 pm and the final voter percentage announced by the ECI at 11.30 pm on the day of polling. The Congress also pointed out that, of the 50 assembly seats where there was an average increase of 50,000 voters, the ruling Mahayuti secured victory in 47.

In December, the ECI clarified that the increase in voter turnout from 5 pm to 11.45 pm was “normal”, with Maharashtra’s chief electoral officer, S. Chockalingam explaining that the 7 per cent increase in voter turnout in the last hour of polling for the assembly election was not a surge, as claimed by the Opposition, but an “average” process.

However, the ECI has repeatedly declined to take action on many RTIs that Nayak filed last year. He explained that public disclosure of not only the data about the tokens distributed, but also the two-hourly voter turnout figures recorded by presiding officers and sector officers, is crucial to determine whether the ECI’s final voter turnout figures are accurate.

“Merely disclosing Form 17C data will not help clarify voter turnout trends that occurred on polling day. Transparency advocates must press for the disclosure of the granular data. The ECI can do itself a favour by disclosing the two-hourly voter turnout data and the number of tokens distributed before the close of polling. This will help clear all doubt about the final voter turnout figures,” said Nayak.

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The post No info on pre-numbered slips issued during LS, assembly polls: ECI appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a two page letter made public today, Kejriwal states that “in the said summons it is not clear as to what capacity I am being summoned.” Besides, he says, the said summons fails to provide details in relation to the File bearing F. No. EClR/ HIUJJ/ 14/2022” which is the criminal complaint in the liquor policy case.

He also states that the “said summons does not specify whether l run being summoned as an individual or in my official capacity as Chief Minister of Delhi or as National Convenor of AAP and appears to be in the nature of a fishing and roving inquiry.” Two senior members of his party, one the Delhi Deputy CM, Manish Sisodia and also, Rajya Sabha MP, Sanjay Singh have already been arrested in the same case. Sisodia’s bail was turned down by the Supreme Court this week.

In the letter, Kejriwal seeks to explain that the “summons appear to be motivated and issued for extraneous considerations. As soon as the summons were issued, on the  afternoon of October 30, 2023, leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) started making statements that he would soon be summoned and arrested. By the evening of October 30, Kejriwal had received the summons.

Kejriwal finally explains (or states) in the letter that as “incumbent Chief Minister of the Government of NCT or Delhi and National Convenor or the Aam Aadmi Party, i.e. the ruling party in the state of National Capital territory (NCT and Punjab.” The fact that there are five states in the Country, i.e. Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarb, Rajasthan and Telangana are heading for elections and he is the chief campaigner for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), he is required to travel and hence cannot be present before the ED.

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The post Withdraw “politically motivated” summons, need to campaign for state elections: Arvind Kejriwal appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, the discussion of One Nation-Election is poised to come back, for two reasons. One is the affinity of the top leadership of the ruling party with the idea of One Nation- One Election. Another reason is that the recent committee constituted by the government on One Nation-One Election is going to submit its report. While that might take time, this article aims to present what has already been said by various committees on the issue of One Nation-One Election.

Before that, there are some provisions of Constitution regarding the duration of Council of People – Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies of the State, that need to be understood.

Article 83 deals with Duration of Houses of Parliament. It states that Rajya Sabha is not subject to dissolution; the Lok Sabha however can be dissolved before the period of five years from the date of first meeting of the Lok Sabha. Article 83(2) states that the Lok Sabha cannot be continued for a period of more than five years except in cases of proclamation of Emergency.

Article 85 deals with Sessions of Parliament, Prorogation and Dissolution. It states that President shall summon houses of Parliament to meet, and may dissolve the House of People i.e., Lok Sabha.

Article 172 deals with duration of State Legislature. It states that Legislative Assembly of a state can continue for not more than 5 years unless it is dissolved sooner. The five-year period can be extended in cases of proclamation of emergency. Article 174 states that the Governor shall, from time to time, summon the legislature to meet and may dissolve the legislative assembly.

What does these articles have to do with the issue of simultaneous elections?

These articles prevent legislative assemblies and the Lok Sabha to continue for more than 5 years unless in case of an Emergency. And currently, if the country is to go through the process of simultaneous elections, say in May 2024, Telangana which has its elections scheduled in December 2023 will have to wait until May 2024, with the same government in power despite crossing the five years mark, set by the Constitution.

The constitutional way is to amend these articles to allow the extension of tenure of legislative assemblies for the purpose of simultaneous elections. The same requirement for amendment would apply if the tenure of Lok Sabha is to be extended to make simultaneous elections possible.

While the ones discussed above are the articles that may need to be amended, according to various committees, in order to make simultaneous elections possible, Article 356 of the Constitution was used to disturb the flow of simultaneous elections in 1968 and 1969, starting the chain of unsynchronised elections in the Country. Article 356 deals with the power of President in case of failure of Constitutional Machinery in State. It states that if the President, on the receipt of a Report from the Governor of a state, is satisfied that the a situation has arisen in which the government of a state cannot be carried on in accordance with the Provisions of the Constitution, the president may proclaim that all the powers of the governor- the head of the executive of the state would now be vested in her or declare that the powers of legislature would be exercisable under the authority of the Parliament. This, in popular parlance, is called imposition of President’s Rule in a State.

In the landmark Supreme Court case of SR Bommai vs. Union of India, the court held that the President’s power under this article to dismiss a state government is not absolute and that this power should only be exercised only after such proclamation is approved by both the houses of Parliament. This acted as a check on the powers of President to dismiss a legislative assembly of the state, like it was done in 1968 and 1969 and in other instances thereafter.

Given that this is the process, let us now understand what different committees have recommended on the issue of simultaneous elections.

I. Law Commission of India- 170^th Report on Reform of Electoral Laws. May 1999.

This committee, in essence, recommended the amendments to the Constitution to make simultaneous elections possible. An important remark that the committee made while vouching for simultaneous elections is that the situations and eventualities of the using Article 356 in future cannot be conceived and provided for. It however relied on the SR Bommai case to argue that the usage of Article 356 has come down considerably. The committee also seems to have recognised the challenges in making simultaneous elections a reality. It stated “Undoubtedly, the desired goal of one election in every five years cannot be achieved overnight in the given circumstances. It has to be achieved in stages.”

Another interesting recommendation by the committee was that it stated that the results of Legislative Assemblies and Lok Sabha be withheld until the expiry of the term of legislative assembly provided the withholding period is not more than 6 months.

To understand this recommendation, let us take the example of Jharkhand, which is scheduled to have the elections for its state assembly in the period of November-December 2024. If this recommendation was to be followed, the General Elections of Lok Sabha that are to be held in May 2024 and the Jharkhand state elections should be conducted simultaneously. However, the results to Jharkhand state elections would only be declared in the period of November-December 2024. That leave a six-seven month lacunae. The committee’s recommendations leave out various issues such as who would govern the state during the period in which election results are being withheld; if the chance is given to the existing government, whether it would be unduly disadvantageous to the opposition in elections etc.

The committee gave limited sets of recommendations without a comprehensive analysis of the consequences.

II. 79^th Report by DEPARTMENT-RELATED PARLIAMENTARY STANDING COMMITTEE ON PERSONNEL, PUBLIC GRIEVANCES, LAW AND JUSTICE on Feasibility of Holding Simultaneous Elections to the House of People (Lok Sabha) and State Legislative Assemblies, December 2015

This report, presented to the Rajya Sabha and tabled in the Lok Sabha in December 2015 exclusively dealt with the issue of Simultaneous Elections.  One of the main reasons for needing simultaneous elections, as stated by the committee, was that elections have become big budget affair and expensive and in most of the cases, expenditures by the candidates are exceeding the ceiling fixed by the Election Commission of India. Another reason that the committee stated is that elections lead to imposition of the Model Code of Conduct in the poll bound state or area, and such imposition puts on hold the entire development programme and activities of the Union and State government in the poll bound state affecting normal governance, leading to policy paralysis and governance deficit. Additionally, reasons that public life can be left undisturbed when elections are conducted one time and that simultaneous elections would free the crucial manpower which is often deployed for prolonged periods on election duties- were also given.

The report listed different suggestions given by the Election Commission of India, and suggestions by different stakeholders such as political parties. The ECI suggested that, in order to avoid premature dissolution of Lok Sabha, a no-confidence motion moved against the government in office should also necessarily include a further ‘confidence motion’ in favour of a government to be headed by a named individual as the future Prime Minister and the voting should take place for the 2 motions together, with the same process applying to state legislative assemblies as well.

It also suggested that if a situation arises where dissolution of Lok Sabha cannot be avoided and if the remainder of the term of Lok Sabha is not long, then the president could carry out the administration of the country on the aid and advice of his Council of Ministers to be appointed by him till the time the next house is constituted at the prescribed time. If the remainder of the term of the Lok Sabha is long, then fresh elections may be held for the rest of what would have been the original term.

The ECI also suggested that the bye-elections that become due in a particular year could be conducted in two windows of one-and-a-half months each. The ECI also suggested that if these proposals are not feasible, all elections falling in a particular period of the year could be conducted in a particular period of the year.

Political Parties that were consulted, according to the committee, felt that simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies is a cost-effective noble proposition but difficult to implement because of our constitutional arrangement. The parties also suggested that the elected government are chosen by people, and they fail for practical reasons, therefore, the will of people should be respected at any cost. The CPI stated that the idea is unscientific and impracticable. The AIMIM opined on similar lines, so did the Nationalist Congress Party and the Indian National Congress. The Shiromani Akali Dal, Desiya Murpokku Dravida Khazagam (DMDK) supported the idea with some suggestions while the Indian Union Muslim League supported the idea outright.

This committee too, echoed the observations made by the Law Commission of India report of 1999, and stated that Simultaneous Elections could be conducted in India but such state of affairs will have to be reached in stages. The committee observed that there is a possibility under the Representation of People Act, 1951 where the election to State Legislative Assemblies could be held 6 months before. The Committee also proposed that there could be two phases of elections, one at mid-term of Lok Sabha wherein elections to all state assemblies whose terms end prior to or after a period of six months to one year from appointed date can be clubbed together. Rest of the state assemblies’ elections, the committee recommended, could be conducted along with the general elections.

Essentially, the committee recommended that elections could be conducted in two phases without having to conduct state elections almost every year. The committee finally stated that it is conscious of the fact that “holding simultaneous elections may not be feasible in 2016 or even a decade” but it expressed confidence that a solution will be found to reduce the frequency of elections which relieve people and government machinery being tired of frequent electoral processes.

III. Draft Report on Simultaneous Elections by Law Commission of India, 30^th August, 2018

This report dealt, in detail, with issues relating to simultaneous elections, and various issues and impediments associated with the process. The report stated that the current framework of Indian Constitution does not allow the conduct of simultaneous elections, and if there are to be constitutional amendments, at least 50% of the states should be ratifying such amendments.

To avoid disruptions to state assemblies and Lok Sabha, the committee recommended that an introduction of a constructive vote of no confidence will give the government a better stability and the government will only be ousted when the member or the group of members come forward with the proposal to form an alternative government.

In case of a hung in the Lok Sabhaa i.e., a dead lock as no party gets a majority, and even the largest party is not able to form the government, the report suggested mid-term elections. The committee however did not apply same logic to state elections. It stated that in case of a situation where government is not being formed, President’s rule under Article 356 could be imposed in the state for a maximum period of 3 years. It also noted that in case of mid-term elections, the concept of remainder term should be applicable to the house. This means that if mid-term elections are to be conducted, 2 years after previous elections, the winning party of the mid-term elections will only remain in power for 3 years.

This report’s recommendations to arrive at simultaneous elections to both Look Sabha and State assemblies banked themselves on political consensus and constitutional amendments. If parties agree, state legislative assemblies falling 6 months prior to or after the Lok Sabha Elections could be conducted at the same time, and for the rest of the assemblies, a Constitutional amendment will fulfil the requirement by curtailing or extending the tenure of such assembly. In case if these are not feasible, the commission noted that all elections falling in a calendar year could be conducted at one time.

This report too, stood on the shoulders of its predecessors, in recommending various ways to conduct simultaneous elections. It essentially did not contribute any novelty to the discourse around simultaneous elections as much as it revisited and reiterated established perspectives without broadening the discussion.

The government now formed a fourth committee headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind is set to examine the feasibility of simultaneous elections, yet again.

Most of the opposition recognises that simultaneous elections will save money but also feels that it is not feasible to conduct them.

One important question that arises is as to why the committees and commissions that are discussed above never saw the imposition of President’s rule for whatever time in state to save up some money for the exchequer and unburden the government machinery as a disproportionate step when it is juxtaposed with people’s right to be governed by an elected government, all the time. The same goes for the recommendations regarding the houses functioning for the remained term. If the Model Code of Conduct hampers developmental activities, the remainder term too hampers such activities if the government is to be there for a 3-year term instead of its usual 5 years. It also could be argued that the fact that we do not have a set synchronisation in elections is a feature of our evolution as a democracy and federal structure.

Different power structures i.e., state government and the centre are judged differently as much as possible, during different elections. Since the ruling establishment has called for simultaneous elections multiple times, the discourse on this issue is only going to increase, as long as the current establishment stays in power. However, the constitutional amendments and any step towards simultaneous elections awaits various challenges ranging from political parties’ opposition to legal challenges.

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The post Analysing the Feasibility of Simultaneous Elections in India: A Review of Committee Recommendations and Constitutional Implications appeared first on SabrangIndia.

For the first time, reportedly since 1988, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has become the only party to have 100 members in the Rajya Sabha. It reached the milestone after winning two seats in Assam and one in Tripura on March 31.

The BJP and its ally the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) have won all four Rajya Sabha seats from Tripura, Nagaland, and Assam. For the first time in Parliament’s history, the Congress does not have a presence from Northeast India, in the Upper House. According to a news report in The Times of India, the “BJP won the Tripura seat on the strength of its numbers and the Nagaland seat uncontested.”

It was alleged “cross-voting and invalid opposition votes” in Assam helped it win the two seats, with its ally. Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma however was jubilant, saying the party’s “strategy was to bank on the conscience of legislators. We have got seven votes from Congress MLAs.” According to TOI, “In the 126- member assembly, BJP and its allies were short of four votes needed to win both Rajya Sabha seats, while the opposition appeared to be comfortably placed to win the one seat it was contesting. From BJP Pabitra Margherita and UPPL’s Rwngra Narzary won the two seats from Assam, and Congress candidate, the sitting Rajya Sabha MP Ripun Bora, lost.

We won both the Rajya Sabha seats from Assam (one by the BJP and other by UPPL,our partner ) by a huge margin of 11 and 9 votes respectively @AmitShah @JPNadda @blsanthosh

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) March 31, 2022

Now the NDA “holds 13 of the 14 seats in the Upper House from the region” and one seat from Assam is held by an Independent, stated the news report. From  Nagaland S Phangnon Konyak of BJP won uncontested, and is the first woman to be elected to the Rajya Sabha from the state. In Tripura BJP’s state president Manik Saha defeated the  CPM’s Bhanu Lal Saha.   

According to news reports counting of votes was delayed after “the Congress approached the Election Commission seeking to invalidate the votes of 5 NDA MLAs” who they accused of publicly revealing their ballot papers. This was rejected by the Election Commission. However, the Congress has reportedly suspended its two MLAs “after one of them voted for the ruling party candidate and another ‘deliberately’ marked his ballot paper in such a way that it got cancelled”. The party demanded action against its MLA Sashikanta Das who had been suspended in December. He had reportedly said he will vote for the ruling BJP-led coalition candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls “for the cause of development”. According to news reports, the Congress also sought action against “BPF legislator Durgadas Boro and three BJP MLAs – Hitendra Nath Goswami, Ganesh Limbu and Sanjay Kishan.”

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) has won two of the three seats in Kerala and Congress won the remaining seat. The Aam Aadmi Party has bagged all five seats from Punjab and BJP has won another seat from Himachal Pradesh taking its tally to five. According to a report in the Financial Express,  A A Rahim of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and P Santhosh Kumar CPI Kannur district secretary were elected on behalf of the LDF, and Jebi Mather of the Congress was elected from the Opposition.

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The post Rajya Sabha Election 2022: 5 seats each for AAP, BJP, two LDF, 1 Congress appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Even as Kerala voted to elect the next state government on April 6, a heated discussion ensued over the entry of women into the Sabarimala temple, yet again. After he cast his vote in Kottayam, Nair Service Society (NSS) general secretary G. Sukumaran Nair on Tuesday told the media that Sabarimala Ayyappa devotees were “still bitter” about the events that “hurt their faith”. Nair added that “there should be a government that stood for values and faith” reported The Hindu. 

According to The NewsMinute, Nair,  added that “people wish to vote for those upholding secularism, democracy, social justice and those who protect the faith of people, which the LDF government was not able to do. The protests and opposition of people in the Sabarimala issue have not died down.” Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress’ campaigns have mentioned the Sabarimala issue. Even Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said figuratively in Kannur that deities of the land, including Lord Ayyappa, would bless the Left Democratic Front (LDF) for ministering to the people in the time of catastrophe, reported the Hindu.

In February, the Kerala government had decided to withdraw “cases of not serious criminal nature’’ registered in connection with the Sabarimala and anti-CAA protests.  According to media reports, the Kerala police had registered an estimated 17,000 cases, against around 68,000 people from different Hindutva outfits as accused, in connection with the Sabarimala protests in 2018 following the Supreme Court decision allowing entry of women to the Ayyappa temple. The citizenship laws that led to widespread protests across the country, resulted in the registration of 530 cases from January to March, 2020 in Kerala. The Congress party had also announced that it would withdraw all cases related to both issues if voted to power.

According to the TNM report, the BJP state president K Surendran even went on to call CM Pinarayi Vijayan an ‘asuran’ (demon) saying he changed his stance on Sabarimala as he fears the government will lose, saying, “The change of statement shows how frail he (Pinarayi Vijayan) is. It is Pinarayi Vijayan and his ‘asura ganangal’ (group of demons) who destroyed Sabarimala. The state government helped the Maneethi Sangam to ascend Sabarimala. In the cover of darkness, Pinarayi and his ‘asura ganangal’ took the women in an ambulance to Sabarimala. People won’t forget this. Now by just saying that gods are with him, people won’t consider it. He is the biggest ‘asuran’.”  

However, the reactions after that came fast and thick, barbs came from opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala who said the CM was late to “atone for his trespasses against the Ayyappa faith”. Congress leader A. K. Antony said the CM “should apologise” to believers for “desecrating” the Sabarimala temple by “ham-fistedly” enacting the 2018 Supreme Court verdict permitting women, irrespective of their age, to worship at Sabarimala, stated the news report. While Ex CM Oommen Chandy said  Vijayan’s ‘invoking’ of Ayyappa faith “was unconvincing’ and Sabarimala devotees would ‘reject his election day overture.’  Meanwhile, the BJP State president K. Surendran reportedly said that NSS’ chief “had given a clear message to the people”. Surendran also said A. K. Antony and Oommen Chandy “were weeping crocodile tears for Sabarimala devotees”. Surendran went a step ahead and told the media that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s police had ‘secretly’ and ‘rapidly’ conveyed “activist women” to Sabarimala Ayyappa temple under cover of darkness in 2018.

According to CPI State secretary Kanam Rajendran, the NSS general secretary might have crossed a line if confirmed that he had made a political statement on polling day. The Hindu report quoted Rajendran as saying, “No other social organisation leader had attempted to broadcast their political preference on voting day. BJP and Congress had harped on about Sabarimala because they had nothing else to say.” The TNM report recalled how the issue of women’s entry into Sabarimala temple had started in 2018 when a Supreme Court verdict allowed women of all ages to worship at the temple in Pathanamthitta district. The state was witness to many protests soon  after two women entered the hill shrine following the Supreme Court verdict. 

Now, on polling day 2021, the discussion resurfaced when all political parties suddenly recalled the matter as if they were still in campaign mode.

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The post Kerala: Sabarimala issue re enters the spotlight even on poll day appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Politicians in poll-bound Kerala are hard at work making their presence felt, being in the public eye is a part of political investments as the election months close in. They are also busy curating their political networks, and strengthening social alliances that they hope will ensure rich dividends come election time. Lines are also blurring between the church and state, quite literally as was reported recently by the Indian Express on how the influential Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church on Thursday “urged its followers to vote for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader R Balashankar”, whose “intervention saved a 1,000-year-old church in Kerala’s Alappuzha district from demolition to widen a national highway.”

According to the IE the church is, “acknowledging the timely intervention of Balashankar, co-convener, BJP national training programme, in preventing the demolition of St George Orthodox Church at Cheppad”. Hence the spokesperson for the Orthodox Church, Fr Johns Abraham Konat, has said that the Church head Baselios Marthoma Paulose II wanted the faithful to keep away partisan political interests to vote for Balashankar. Fr Konat reportedly has said, “If Balashankar is not voted to victory, it would be ungratefulness. The Prime Minister had intervened in the issue of the Cheppad church, which was subsequently handed over to the Archaeology department and thus froze the decision to demolish the church. It was Balashankar who gave courageous leadership in this effort to protect the historical church.” He added that, “He [Balashankar] is the BJP candidate in Chengannur, where Orthodox Church is an influential force. When the LDF and UDF fronts kept away from the issue without rendering any help to protect the church, it was Balashankar who, like a Church member, intervened.” According to the news report, Balashankar is likely to contest from Chengannur assembly seat, which is currently held by CPI (M) legislator Saji Cheriyan.

The Church, at Cheppad, is believed to have been built in 1050 AD, and has priceless murals, and is the burial place of the revered 19th century Malankara Metropolitan Philipose Mar Dionysius. However it was reportedly facing “demolition” according to the widening alignment decided by the National Highway Authority of India. According to the IE orders had been issued in this regard, and the Church had raised the matter seeking the intervention across political lines to save it from demolition. However, it was BJP’s Balashankar, who eventually raised the issue to with Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari. Subsequently, reported IE, the officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) inspected the church, and declared it to be “one of the rarest in Kerala, with beautiful mural paintings on the walls of the altar,” and due to its historical, art and architectural importance the church,  ASI felt should be a protected monument of national importance. Hence the ‘blessings’ as it were are now being showered in thanksgiving on the BJP politician.  

In direct contrast is an example of the ‘Left’ side of the political divide in the state known as God’s own country. A group of eminent Muslim citizens have written to the CPI (M) General Secretary, Sitaram Yechuri, their concerns about what they term as “Kerala CPM’s unhealthy and negative Communal shift”. The group has raised questions and alleged that there has been a “the shocking shift” in that the “CPI(M) has taken in Kerala” recently, apparently to gain “electoral dividends”. The letter alleges that Vijayaraghavan, the party’s acting secretary in the state, has been consistently making “Islamophobic statements vitiating the social environment of Kerala”. Another allegation is about tags like ‘terrorists’ being heaped on ’ those who oppose environmentally questionable projects.

Responding to these allegations Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M) Politburo member Brinda Karat told SabrangIndia that none of the “signatories have anything to do with the CPIM”. According to Karat, one of the signatories of this letter has “in an earlier FB post made a scurrilous allegation that Prakash Karat senior Polit Bureau member is about to join the BJP! Such absurdities certainly raise questions about the credibility of and motives behind the letter sent on the eve of the elections.” The letter has been signed by a group of scientists, lawyers, writers, filmmakers, professors and has made strong allegations against Vijayaraghavan. The letter writers say they are concerned about what they call a “possible destruction of the social fabric of Kerala,” and  the “new social engineering the CPIM is doing in Kerala.”

Brinda Karat has said that the the signatories have not answered “the crux of the issue: did the Muslim League and the UDF ally with some Muslim extremist groups in the local body elections? Yes they did and that is the criticism of the CPI (M) against the Muslim League and the UDF. It is totally wrong to equate criticism of such an opportunist alliance with extremist elements with the CPIM’s approach to minority rights”. She says that “on such grounds to term the CPI (M) as Islamophobic is nothing but a politically motivated charge.” According to Karat the party’s acting Secretary Vijay Raghavan has clarified repeatedly that “majoritarian communalism represented by the BJP, the RSS and the sangh parivar are the greatest danger. However in this fight we can never compromise with any extremist or communal elements and groups working in the name of minority communities.Those who do so will be exposed before the people.”

Karat added that “it is an insult to the hundreds of CPI(M) workers martyred by the RSS to suggest the Party has in any way diluted its fight against the BJP. This is a canard being spread on the eve of the elections to discredit the LDF. This is all the more so since as people of Kerala know the BJP and the UDF are working in tandem to discredit the LDF including on the use of central agencies targeting the Chief Minister. It is because the minorities of Kerala are appreciating the stand of CPI (M) in defence of secular values, that such charges are being made which have no substance.”

However, Pareethu Bava Khan, who is one of the signatories, told SabrangIndia that the group is awaiting an official reply to the letter and will only decide what to do next after that. 

Related:

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Two former Kerala HC judges join BJP
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Kerala Government to drop Sabarimala, anti CAA protest cases

The post Kerala’s political climate is hotting up as election season approaches appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On February 11, the Minister of Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad informed the Rajya Sabha that Dalits who convert to Islam and Christianity will not be eligible to contest assembly or parliamentary elections from Scheduled Caste reserved constituencies, reported The Times of India.

Dalits taking to the above-mentioned faiths also cannot claim other reservation benefits. But according to a TOI report, the Law Minister clarified that those adopting Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist faith could contest from Scheduled Caste reserved seats and will be receiving other reservation benefits.

To the question asked by BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao in Rajya Sabha, the minister said, “Paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) order outlines that…no person who professes a religion different from Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste”.

Further, the Union Minister also informed that at present, there is no proposal to bring in any amendment in the Representation of the People’s Act to disallow Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe converting to Islam and Christianity from contesting elections.

The Hindu also quoted Ravi Shankar Prasad saying that there were multiple judgments in place on quota to Dalit Muslims and that the Supreme Court had said that, “till the time you agree that you don’t face the same discrimination then benefits cannot be granted to you”.

This stance of the present government worsens the conditions of those Dalits who have converted to Islam or Christianity, the subject of a decades long Constitutional challenge, still pending before the Supreme Court. The root of this injustice lies in a 1950 Presidential (Scheduled Castes) Order, that specifically excludes Dalit Christians and Muslims from any schemes, affirmative action’s etc. that are allowed to others.

Related:

Oratory comes with conviction
Christian groups demand justice for Dalit minorities
60 Years Of Constitutional Rights Denied To 20 Millions Indian Dalit Christians
Dalits, OBCs forced to bury their deceased by the roadside
Over 400 detainees released under Public Safety Act in J&K: MHA

The post No SC quota for Dalits converting to Islam & Christianity to contest elections: Centre to RS appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Lebanese response, accompanied by jubilation throughout Lebanon, shows that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have overplayed his cards. However, for Netanyahu it was a worthy gamble, as the Israeli leader is desperate for any new political capital that could shield him against increasingly emboldened contenders in the country’s September 17 general elections.

A fundamental question that could influence any analysis of the decision to strike Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Gaza is whether the strategy originated from the Israeli government or the limited personal calculations of Netanyahu himself. I contend that the latter is true.

Israel has already violated the sovereignty of all of these regions, bombing some of them hundreds of times in the past, but striking all at once is unprecedented. Since neither Israel, nor its US allies offered any convincing military logic behind the campaign, there can be no other conclusion that the objectives were entirely political.

One obvious sign that the attacks were meant to benefit Netanyahu, and Netanyahu only, is the fact that the Israeli Prime Minister violated an old Israeli protocol of staying mum following this type of cross-border violence. It is also uncommon for top Israeli officials to brag about their country’s intelligence outreach and military capabilities. Israel, for example, has bombed Syria hundreds of times in recent years, yet rarely taken responsibility for any of these attacks.

Compare this with Netanyahu’s remarks following the two-day strikes of August 24-25. Only minutes after the Israeli strikes, Netanyahu hailed the army’s “major operational effort”, declaring that “Iran has no immunity anywhere.”

Regarding the attack on the southeast region of Aqraba in Syria, Netanyahu went into detail, describing the nature of the target and the identities of the enemy as well.

Two of the Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria were identified by the Israeli army, which distributed their photographs while allegedly travelling on the Iranian airline, Mahan “which Israel and the United States have identified as a major transporter of weaponry and materiel to Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon,” according to the Times of Israel.

Why would Israel go to this extent, which will surely help the targeted countries in uncovering some of Israel’s intelligence sources?

The Economist revealed that “some … in Israel’s security and political establishments are uncomfortable” with Netanyahu’s tireless extolling of “Israel’s intelligence-gathering and operational successes in surprising detail.”

The explanation lies in one single phrase: the September 17 elections.

In recent months, Netanyahu has finally managed to wrestle the title: the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister, a designation that the Israeli leader has earned, despite his checkered legacy dotted with abuse of power, self-serving agenda and several major corruption cases that rope in Netanyahu directly, along with his wife and closest aides.

Yet, it remains unclear whether Netanyahu can hang on for much longer. Following the April 9 elections, the embattled Israeli leader tried to form a government of like-minded right-wing politicians, but failed. It was this setback that pushed for the dissolution of the Israeli Knesset on May 29 and the call for a new election. While Israeli politics is typically turbulent, holding two general elections within such a short period of time is very rare, and, among other things, it demonstrates Netanyahu’s faltering grip on power.

Equally important is that, for the first time in years, Netanyahu and his Likud party are facing real competition. These rivals, led by Benjamin Gantz of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) centrist party are keen on denying Netanyahu’s every possible constituency, including his own pro-illegal settlements and pro-war supporters.

Statements made by Gantz in recent months are hardly consistent with the presumed ideological discourse of the political center, anywhere. The former Chief of General Staff of the Israeli army is a strong supporter of illegal Jewish settlements and an avid promoter of war on Gaza. Last June, Gantz went as far as accusing Netanyahu of “diminishing Israel’s deterrence” policy in Gaza, which “is being interpreted by Iran as a sign of weakness.”

In fact, the terms “weak” or “weakness” have been ascribed repeatedly to Netanyahu by his political rivals, including top officials within his own right-wing camp. The man who has staked his reputation on tough personal or unhindered violence in the name of Israeli security is now struggling to protect his image.

This analysis does not in any way discount the regional and international objectives of Netanyahu’s calculations, leading amongst them his desire to stifle any political dialogue between Tehran and Washington, an idea that began taking shape at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. But even that is insufficient to offer a rounded understanding of Netanyahu’s motives, especially because the Israeli leader is wholly focused on his own survival, as opposed to future regional scenarios.

However, the “Mr. Security” credentials that Netanyahu aimed to achieve by bombing multiple targets in four countries might not yield the desired dividends. Israeli media is conveying a sense of panic among Israelis, especially those living in the northern parts of the country and in illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Golan Heights.

This is hardly the strong and mighty image that Netanyahu was hoping to convey through his military gamble. None of the thousands of Israelis who are currently being trained on surviving Lebanese retaliations are particularity reassured regarding the power of their country.

Netanyahu is, of course, not the first Israeli leader to use the military to achieve domestic political ends. Late Israeli leader, Shimon Peres, has done so in 1996 but failed miserably, but only after killing over 100 Lebanese and United Nations peacekeepers in the Southern Lebanese village of Qana.

The consequences of Netanyahu’s gamble might come at a worse price for him than simply losing the elections. Opening a multi-front war is a conflict that Israel cannot win, at least, not any more.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’ (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Courtesy: Counter Current

The post The War Ahead: Netanyahu’s Elections Gamble Will be Costly for Israel appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Alexander Nix, weeks before Channel 4 News screened its fatal investigation. Image: Christian Charisius/DPA.

“I worked at Cambridge Analytica while they had Facebook datasets. I went to Russia one time while I worked for Cambridge. I visited Julian Assange while I worked for Cambridge. I once donated to WikiLeaks. I pitched the Trump campaign and wrote the first contract. All of these things make it look like I am at the centre of some big, crazy thing. I see that, and I can’t argue with that. The only thing that I’ve got going for me is that I didn’t do anything wrong. So they can search everything that they want!”

It was May 2018. Brittany Kaiser, the second Cambridge Analytica whistleblower to go public, had just heard she was being subpoenaed by the Mueller investigation, in a moment captured in ‘The Great Hack’ (a documentary which premiered at the Sundance film festival this week). The media were reporting her February 2017 visit to Assange, another piece of circumstantial evidence supposedly connecting her to the controversies around the successes of Donald Trump and Brexit. Kaiser continued to protest her innocence, and to cooperate fully with investigations. And today we can reveal more about what she knew.

In explosive recordings that Kaiser made in the summer of 2016, excerpts from which are published exclusively by openDemocracy today, her former boss, Alexander Nix, makes a series of extraordinary claims. The onetime Cambridge Analytica CEO talks of bribing opposition leaders, facilitating election-stealing and suppressing voter turnout.

When we asked Nix to comment on this new material, he told us that many of our claims had been proven to be false, and others were completely speculative and not grounded in reality. But what we are publishing for the first time are his own words.

Nix boasts of orchestrating election black ops around the world. He reveals how in Trinidad and Tobago, Strategic Communications Laboratories (the British company behind Cambridge Analytica) engineered a highly successful grassroots campaign to “increase apathy” so that young Afro-Caribbeans would not vote. In Nigeria, evidence was found that SCL used rallies by religious leaders to discourage voting in key districts. Nix also makes a knowing reference to Brexit, although Cambridge Analytica has repeatedly denied involvement in that campaign.

In the recordings, Nix describes one of his major clients, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, as a “fascist”. And he sheds more light on the nexus of data, money and power that Cambridge Analytica deployed as it backed Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency.

A number of these shocking allegations are also revealed in ‘The Great Hack’. Yet this is far more than a story of one rogue company, now brought low after its name became a byword for electoral controversy. It exposes the back doors through which democracies across the world have been left vulnerable to manipulation. And it is the tip of the iceberg.
 

What the whistleblower told Parliament

It was almost six years ago, in a London sushi bar, that Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive Alexander Nix first sought to enlist Brittany Kaiser, saying: “Let me get you drunk and steal your secrets.” Back when she was an idealistic nineteen-year-old Democrat from Chicago, she had dropped everything to work on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. Later, after studying human rights and international law, she had moved into the unruly world of trade deals with states like Libya and Iran.

Kaiser resisted Nix at first, volunteering for the Ready for Hillary campaign instead. But her experience of the Clinton machine left her disillusioned and frustrated. What’s more, her parents were caught on a financial razor’s edge; she needed to pay the bills. In 2014, she finally struck her perilous bargain with Nix. He became her mentor, she his apprentice.

Brittany Kaiser in front of Parliament’s fake news inquiry, April 2018 Image: PA Images

Nix had teamed up in 2013 with the alt-right entrepreneur Steve Bannon and the family of hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer to launch Cambridge Analytica. Their mission was to arm a rising populist right to defeat the big data machine built by Obama.

Kaiser’s decision to work for Nix and Bannon was hard for her former Obama colleagues to understand. Looking back, she told me with a measure of irony that she had been guided by the first African-American president’s creed: “It is important to sit down with rogue actors, without preconditions.” Like others of her millennial generation, she also felt dispossessed, impatient with the status quo and hungry for adventure.

I first met Brittany Kaiser in February 2017. She was shockingly frank about her company’s role in the right-wing political revolutions of 2016, but it was clear that she knew even more.

We spoke on several occasions over more than a year, before I suggested that she blow the whistle publicly to myself and Paul Lewis of The Guardian. She readily agreed.

She testified against her former colleagues, providing arresting new evidence about their unpaid data work on Brexit for the controversial businessman Arron Banks (now under investigation by the National Crime Agency) and his Leave.EU campaign, as well as possible abuses of Facebook and insurance data. She provided the first real proof of Steve Bannon’s role in setting up these deals for Nix, and of Cambridge Analytica’s exclusive data relationship with Bannon’s alt-right propaganda platform, Breitbart News.

In April 2018 Kaiser testified before the British parliament’s ‘fake news’ inquiry. She covered a dizzying array of topics alongside Cambridge Analytica, including her friends’ cryptocurrency-powered telecommunications schemes in Mexico, and her time working with WikiLeaks’ British lawyers at Doughty Street Chambers on “prisoner of conscience” cases.

The parliamentarians wanted to know more about a group of hackers – alumni of Israeli intelligence – who she had introduced to oil-billionaire clients, and who had infiltrated the Nigerian political opposition as part of a 2015 campaign by Nix’s firm. But when it came to the inflammatory content of that campaign, Kaiser pointed the finger firmly at Sam Patten, a long-standing fixture on Cambridge Analytica’s roster of globe-trotting political strategists.

According to whistleblower Chris Wylie, Cambridge Analytica/SCL used the campaign video in this report from The Guardian to influence the Nigerian presidential election of 2015.

Immediately after running the controversial Nigeria campaign for Nix, Patten went into business with the Russian operative Konstanin Kilimnik. His new partner was not only the right hand of indicted Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine, but also a suspected Russian military intelligence asset. Patten has recently pleaded guilty to channelling donations from a Ukranian oligarch into Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. Kilimnick himself is wanted for questioning by special counsel Robert Mueller, and has recently fled to Moscow
.
One of the British parliamentarians asked Kaiser the obvious question: “Have you ever worked for, paid or unpaid, or provided information to, any country’s intelligence agency, their representatives or associated organisations?” Her answer was “No;” but pressed, she acknowledged having been “approached” in the past, before her time at Cambridge

Analytica, “although they wouldn’t properly identify themselves… I’ve been taught what to look out for: my grandfather was a military intelligence officer for 27 years, and knew when I was young that would be a possibility, and told me what to look out for… and to say no.” 

Damian Collins MP, the chair of the fake news inquiry, had one final question for Brittany Kaiser. “If Alexander Nix wanted to reach out to Julian Assange, couldn’t he do it through you?” Without losing her self-possession, she laughed for a split second and responded: “That’s what I was wondering…”

Collins then announced that Nix was pulling out of his own scheduled interrogation the following day. Within weeks, Cambridge Analytica and Nix’s wider network of data, political and security consulting operations had filed for bankruptcy. It took another month before the silver-tongued, polo-playing Etonian consultant accepted his third summons from Parliament. Wriggling under the spotlight, he claimed to be the real victim of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. According to his telling, a liberal media witch-hunt had found him guilty of the victories of Trump (who Nix had proudly helped to elect) and Brexit – which he still claimed to have had nothing to do with.

Nix threw particular doubt on the credibility of Chris Wylie, the pink-haired Canadian whistleblower who first set off the firestorm by revealing to Carole Cadwalladr in The Observer his own role in procuring and weaponising the hijacked data of tens of millions of Facebook users for Cambridge Analytica. Nix claimed that Wylie had left in 2014 to set up his own competing firm, which then itself pitched work for both Trump and Brexit. According to Nix’s telling, Wylie had even spoken of being excited to engage with “crazy evil Russians”.

I was part of the small audience for Nix’s parliamentary grilling. Next to me sat David Carroll, the principled campaigner for data rights who sued Cambridge Analytica to expose the thousands of pieces of political, consumer and psychographic information they held on him and 240 million other Americans. (Carroll’s dogged campaign recently secured the first guilty plea from Nix’s UK firm.) Suddenly I received a flurry of urgent messages from Kaiser, then in the US. 

The Guardian had just broken the story of her meeting with Julian Assange in February 2017. Based on private material submitted to Parliament, the article suggested that not only had she discussed the US elections with the WikiLeaks founder, she had even funnelled cryptocurrency payments to the organisation. On the same day, Kaiser contradicted the allegations in an interview with the Financial Times. “I didn’t conspire to leak Hillary’s emails and I have nothing to do with Russia,” she told me despairingly. 

I wondered: could this young woman really be the elusive link connecting the Trump campaign to Assange and ‘Guccifer’, the hacker subsequently unmasked as Russian military intelligence? Or was someone framing her to throw us all off the scent?

Brittany Kaiser had already allowed me to review emails and documents in the course of my reporting, and to help analyse her materials for testimony and publication by Parliament. Now she allowed me to privately review a further motherlode of files so I could find out the truth for myself; she also agreed to be followed by ‘The Great Hack’ filmmakers. I understand that Mueller’s team issued a subpoena but it was never served on her, and that she has cooperated very closely with official investigations in the US. I found no indication whatsoever that she might have been involved in the Democratic National Committee hack.

Kaiser had originally acknowledged in Parliament that she introduced Nix to her friends in Julian Assange’s London legal team in 2015, but said she knew nothing of her boss’s own contacts with him. Her cryptocurrency donation to WikiLeaks (made with gifted Bitcoin she had no other use for) had taken place several years earlier, while she was working on human rights issues in countries like Iraq. 

If we blame a young woman like Brittany Kaiser for all the failings of Western democracy, or harp endlessly on the significant roles played by Julian Assange or Russia, we risk obscuring where the greatest responsibility lies. As we unearthed more pieces of the puzzle, learning ever more about the back doors through which our democracies have been hacked, I realised the real scandal was closer to home.

Anyone seeking a single master key to the conspiracy of 2016 risks missing the forest for the trees. As Assange himself wrote in 2006, “Not every conspirator trusts or knows every other conspirator, even though they are all connected… When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently command and control the forces in its environment.”

Investigations into Trump and Brexit are spotlighting a whole system of conspiracies against democracy, which together do more than any individual plotter to undermine the public good. Leading Western oligarchs, from the Mercers and Steve Bannon to Mark Zuckerberg, did far more than the Russians to elect Donald Trump. The full story has yet to be told. Justice demands that we ask the bigger questions.

Throughout 2016, as a practitioner of politics and technology, I tracked the movements that carried Brexit and Trump to victory. They broke the mould of establishment right-wing campaigns, challenging the broken status quo and tapping bottom-up energies like never before.

But they were also full of black operations, lies, hacks and leaks, with playbooks eerily reminiscent of the Russian political technologists sometimes nicknamed “The Wizards of Oz”. Most strangely, this strange company called Cambridge Analytica, with access to masses of illicit Facebook data and a track record in psychological warfare, seemed to have played a significant part on both sides of the Atlantic.

I personally campaigned against Brexit, I followed the Bernie Sanders campaign on the ground in 2016, and my friends and I lost those fights. We watched the technologies we had been trying to harness for democratic ends being turned against us; we saw hard-right populists hijack our banner of change.

I felt a crack in history opening up during 2016. I was spending most of my time starting up Crowdpac (our political crowdfunding and democratic big-data platform) in Europe. We never sold data, but almost a million people used our questionnaires to inform their Brexit vote; so I understood what Cambridge Analytica was doing from the other end of the telescope. After Trump’s election, I started trying to find out what had really gone wrong and how we could fix it.

Private conversations with contacts on the other side, notably Brittany Kaiser, gave me a glimpse of their murky network of international connections. My wife is a creative and product visionary who had worked at Deepmind, the leading British artificial intelligence company taken over by Google. I told her what I was discovering, and she agreed I needed to pursue it. Over the following two years, this journey took me to dark places I would never otherwise have entered. At times I feared for my own life, or for others’.

In a former life, Kaiser had participated in some of the progressive movements and platforms I had helped to build. Now we shared support for Sanders, experience in private diplomacy and a conviction that data could be used for good. Yet she told indiscreet stories of her own proximity to leading right-wing players, and the moral conflict between some of her work and her underlying values seemed intense.

I decided to find out if Kaiser’s company had truly hacked our elections, whether they had covert links to Russia, and how culpable Silicon Valley and the West’s own oligarchs were behind the scenes. It was not easy.

One former employee of Cambridge Analytica compared others’ reticence to “the omertà of the Mafia”, not least because people were afraid of the company’s powerful principals. The family of Robert Mercer, not only a billionaire but also a data scientist accused of white supremacist views, were its controlling investors. The Mercers’ consigliere Steve Bannon sat on Nix’s board with Robert Mercer’s daughter Rebekah, who Nix sometimes referred to as his “work wife”. 

Steve Bannon in his White House days, 2017. Image: Douliery Olivier/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images

Materials revealed to me and testimony provided by Brittany Kaiser and other sources, some of which have subsequently been published, confirm that Bannon was actively involved in brokering Cambridge Analytica’s relationships with Trump, Brexit campaigners and a flotilla of Mercer-linked organisations. (Whistleblowers have also provided extensive evidence to openDemocracy of the relationships between the Brexit campaign, Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon). Bannon admitted last spring that he “put the company together”, but continues to claim he knew nothing of Cambridge Analytica’s misdeeds during his time on its board. Earlier this month he launched The Movement, his latest attempt to lay waste to the politics of the European Union and empower the populist far right with data and strategic advice.
 
Brittany Kaiser and Chris Wylie remain almost unique among former Cambridge Analytica staffers in their willingness to talk publicly. This is particularly striking given that Alexander Nix reportedly failed to pay most of his employees severance they were owed, but himself walked away with a payoff of at least $8.7 million. Nix has denied these allegations, although they were confirmed by multiple sources.

In the course of my investigation, I nonetheless managed to speak with almost a dozen sources with close knowledge of the company’s operations, and gathered previously unpublished materials and insights from a number of them. One senior source who originally wanted to save the company swiftly realised that they had to “kill the dragon”. 

Why? For most of its employees, Cambridge Analytica was just another startup, battling for clients in the Wild West world of personal data and advertising technology (“ad-tech”). It overhyped its value proposition, its data architecture and processes were chaotic, not all projects went well; but many felt proud of their work. They compartmentalised the most controversial contracts, blamed Nix and his lieutenants for any sketchiness, and believed that Cambridge Analytica had become a scapegoat for the systemic abuses of the data brokerage industry. “Everyone is doing it,” I heard again and again.
 

The smoking gun

Brittany Kaiser spoke often about “the crazy things Alexander would say”. But it was hard to find the smoking gun. Then Kaiser and I found an old recording buried deep in her laptop files. It was Alexander Nix’s extraordinary pitch, recorded on her iPhone in the heat of that fateful summer of 2016.

Last March The Guardian, The New York Times and Britain’s Channel 4 News broke the story of Chris Wylie’s whistleblowing for the first time. Seventy-two hours later, Channel 4 News released undercover recordings of Nix and his fellow executives. They talked about ‘honey traps’ that used Ukrainian prostitutes and boasted of secret teams who “ghosted in, did the work, ghosted out” of countries, and “put information into the bloodstream of the internet… with no branding, so it’s unattributable, untrackable”. But even in the Channel 4 sting, Nix was careful to caveat his most inflammatory claims. Not so in Kaiser’s iPhone recording: the mask is truly off.

“What we sought to do here is… to build a workable model of persuasion that could be rolled out across the United States initially. To help us to target people at an individual level in a way that would increase compliance through communications.

“Our inventory has questions like, are you frequently lonely, do you enjoy taking part in new initiatives? It’s not an opinion survey. Because we’re not interested in what you think about the president. We’re interested in you, and trying to work out…” Nix searches for the right phrase: “what are your buttons?

“A few years later we were in Nigeria again, and this was a campaign for [presidential candidate Umaru] Yar’Adua, who was the puppet for [incumbent president Olusegun] Obasanjo,” Nix continues. He appears to be talking about the 2007 elections, not the 2015 race in which Brittany Kaiser and Sam Patten were involved. “So we persuaded our client to do something quite unusual. We persuaded him to allow us to tell everyone in Nigeria that they were planning on stealing the election.

“And the reason we did this was to inoculate them. We ran this campaign for about 12 months saying, oh, the government’s going to steal the election. And then, when the Jimmy Carter Center – who was monitoring the election – announced that the election was not ‘free and fair’, everyone was like… ‘Yeah, we know that.’ As opposed to going ‘WHAT?!!’ and getting really angry!” Yar’Adua won the election by a landslide, but the outcome was controversial and widely thought to have been rigged.

Nix’s UK company Strategic Communications Laboratories and its US wing Cambridge Analytica were usually careful to mask their most controversial activities in case studies. But I found one brochure in which further telling details of this Nigeria campaign slipped through: “SCL advised that rather than focusing on swing voters, the party should instead aim to dissuade opposition supporters from voting – an action that could be easily monitored. This was achieved by organising anti-election rallies on the day of polling in opposition strongholds, many conducted by local religious figures to maximise their appeal to rural communities.”

Kaiser heard Alexander Nix give this pitch many times. This previously unknown recording provides irrefutable evidence of him boasting to prospective clients about his experience in voter suppression, his comfort with sowing apathy and fatalism about corruption, and his readiness to facilitate election-stealing. Asked for comment about his own statements, Nix today denied that SCL had worked in Nigeria in 2007.

Crucially, this recording sets in context the claim by a senior Trump campaign source that “we have three major voter suppression operations under way”, made to Bloomberg in October 2016. By then Cambridge Analytica was working simultaneously with the Trump campaign; the Defeat Crooked Hillary Super PAC, overseen personally by Rebekah Mercer; an underground platform doing psychographic microtargeting of congregations and religious communities; the far-right Media Research Center; the National Rifle Association; and a massive, secretively funded campaign by the National Sports Shooting Federation of gun companies.
 

How to make black youth not vote

Nix moved on to pitch his next case study – a youth mobilisation campaign. Again, all is not as it seems. “Trinidad is a very interesting case history of how we look at problems,” Nix said. “Trinidad’s tiny – it’s 1.3 million people – but almost exactly half the country are Indian and half the country are Black, Afro-Caribbean. And there are two main political parties, one for the Blacks and one for the Indians… when the Indians are in power the Blacks don’t get anything, and vice-versa, you know – they screw each other. So we were working, I think for the third time in Trinidad, and we were working for the Indians, and we did a huge amount for research, and two really important things came out.

“One was that all the youth, Indian and Afro-Caribbean, felt disenfranchised … And secondly, amongst the Indians the familial hierarchies were really strong. There was huge respect for their elders and their parents and their families, but not so for the Afro-Caribbeans. And that was enough information to inform the entire campaign.

“We went to the client and said, we only want to do one thing, we want to run a campaign where we target the youth – all youth, all the Blacks and all the Indians – and we try and increase apathy. And they didn’t really understand why… but they allowed us to do this campaign, and the campaign had to be non-political, because no one, the kids don’t care about politics. It had to be reactive, because they’re lazy; inclusive of all ethnicities; bottom-up. It had to be exciting, because kids want to do something fun.

“We came up with this campaign which was all about ‘Be part of the gang, do something cool, be part of a movement.’ And it was called the ‘Do So’ campaign… A3 posters. And graffiti, yellow paint, you know, we cut stencils with the jigsaw… And we’d give these to kids, and they’d get in their cars at night, you know, just make a drawing, get in the car, and race around the country putting up these posters and getting chased by the police and all their friends were doing it, and it was fucking brilliant fun… 

A poster from the ‘Do So’ campaign. Image: courtesy of Kierron Yip Ngow/Facebook.

“Do So. Don’t vote. Don’t be involved in politics. It’s like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they’re making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that’s being graffitied! … It was carnage.

“And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn’t vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”

Again, Nix was selling his company’s expertise in promoting cynicism and apathy to suppress turnout among the opposition. But this campaign was even more manipulative: enlisting young Afro-Caribbeans in what pretended to be an authentic youth movement, secretly designed to manipulate them into surrendering their votes. This is what ‘compliance’ means in psychological warfare: achieving the desired behavioural effect from a ‘hostile audience’.

Asked for comment on the Do-So campaign, Nix responded in an email earlier today, writing, “The objective of this campaign was to highlight and protest against political corruption. There is nothing unlawful or illegal about assisting with this activity. SCL / CA has never undertaken voter suppression and there is no evidence to the contrary.”

Nix’s closing comments in his summer 2016 pitch were tantalising: “We’ve got an in-house intelligence team, so we can do full intelligence protection… Opposition don’t hack your emails and everything else. And we’re pretty good at getting intelligence too… You know what? We do a lot of counter operations. You can spend $10 million on an election. Or we can send one of our guys in to go offer the leader of the opposition a bribe, you know, three weeks before polling. It’s a very good way to win an election.”

Beneath the veneer, this seems to have been some of the work Alexander Nix was most proud of. This is how he pitched his company around the world, just as he was finally starting to work for Trump. This is the man who the Mercers and Steve Bannon enlisted to help them reshape the American political mind.
 

On the US stage

In Kaiser’s recording Nix talks cynically about his work in the Republican primaries: with Ted Cruz, with Ben Carson, and then with the presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. He claims to have turned Cruz from “the most hated man in US politics” into the front runner before Trump’s wildcard surge. It was not out of love: “We hated this guy. He’s far right wing, he’s like, you know, fascist,” Nix says of his own candidate. The success factor was big data, which “allows you to literally go in and target every single individual”. What about Brexit? “We don’t talk about that,” he says knowingly, after including it in a list of campaigns they were involved in. Kaiser adds ironically, “Oops – we won!”

Nix compares his strategies to a marketing campaign selling Coca-Cola in a movie theatre. Instead of working on branding and adverts, turn up the temperature. Get the viewers hot and bothered: they’ll buy more Coke for sure. This cynical perspective can be traced back to the founder of the modern public relations industry, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who wrote: “In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

In the early days of the Cold War, Bernays worked to topple the government of Guatemala through a domestic and foreign propaganda campaign on behalf of the United Fruit Company, the forerunner of Chiquita. Decades later, Nix claimed to be at the forefront of an evolution from “Mad Men” to “Math Men”, replacing the lightbulb moments of unreliable Don Draper creatives on Madison Avenue with mass data and predictive microtargeting. He wanted to precisely hit the Pavlovian reflexes of you, me, everyone. Through this lens, voters become rats in the oligarchs’ maze.

As Nix gleefully claims of another campaign in which the son of a billionaire African liberation leader covertly funded the youth movement which then drafted him as their candidate for president, “We created everything. We created a need that didn’t exist.”
 

Exit Nix

A year after this recording, Nix was negotiating an abortive acquisition deal with Martin Sorrell’s world-leading WPP conglomerate of advertising and marketing firms. In January 2018, he finally raised almost $20m for a new company called Emerdata.

Papers obtained by my investigation indicate the Mercers were joined by Chinese and Gulf investors in this effort, although the ultimate sources of their funds remain unclear. Johnson Ko, the Chinese state-linked business partner of American mercenary Erik Prince, briefly joined Emerdata’s board alongside one of his associates. (Cambridge Analytica China was also incubated at Ko’s firm Reorient Capital during 2017.) 

The majority of the new funds injected into Emerdata seem to have been extracted personally by Nix through various different pretexts, according to conversations I had with well-placed sources and review of bankruptcy documents. The biggest withdrawal of $8.7 million took place after Kaiser’s whistleblowing, and before Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections went into administration. Many employees were never paid their outstanding salaries and severance: the general sacrificed his footsoldiers, most of whom just wanted to get out and move on.
I first discovered Brittany Kaiser’s support for Bernie Sanders via a YouTube video of a company party at the dog races, arrestingly subtitled “We ‘Rigg’ Elections”. It shows a comedy routine performed by one of Cambridge Analytica’s data scientists, who notes Kaiser’s past involvement with the Obama campaign, suggests she may still be working for the Democrats, and includes this memorable line about Alexander Nix: “He could sell an anchor to a drowning man.” 

Listening again to the pitch recording, I felt that Nix, who continues to protest his innocence and attempt to reboot his career, is now the one sinking under the weight of accumulating evidence. What about those who enabled him? 
 

Beyond Facebookistan, New Deal 2.0?

There is no question that Cambridge Analytica’s tactics were somewhat effective in pulling “the wires which control the public mind”, although I have found little evidence that their much-vaunted psychographics actually worked. What seems to have had the most impact was the dubious data hoard they assembled to target dark ads on Facebook, combined with the brutal efficacy of their messages and tactics.

Yet this was just one of the tangled web of conspiracies now being exposed. It is increasingly clear that a global underworld of manipulators and power brokers treated 2016 as a playground of opportunities. The democracies of the US and the UK were left wide open; we turned out to be almost defenceless against their designs. Central players in the subversion of our open societies regularly attend conferences of the global elite, such as last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Most still seem to operate with impunity. 

During our debrief in Thailand, Kaiser soon started connecting the dots between her fury at the powerful men who had been pulling her strings, her conviction that the greatest abuses of power were taking place in Silicon Valley, and the way her own company had been used to “manipulate millions of voters across America”. Her curiosity started to sharpen: how had she and countless others been so misled?

“Brittany spent a long time in the underworld,” I say toward the end of ‘The Great Hack’. Karim Amer, the film’s co-director, asked me whether I was ever concerned she would let me down. It took me a while to answer. I believed that she had made mistakes, that sometimes things break and cannot be put back together, and that ultimately only she was responsible for her own actions. But more importantly, I believe in the possibility of redemption: both for individuals, and for us collectively as a society. Those who have not gone beyond the pale can always learn and grow. Few of us have made no mistakes.

Nix memorably describes in his pitch how much more effective it is to protect a private beach from trespassers by putting up a sign that says “Sharks! Keep Out”. The brutal reality is that we live in a world that is under constant siege by sharks of many different kinds, from the financial markets to Silicon Valley and the White House. The ultimate goal of Russian interference and billionaire voter suppression campaigns alike is to get us to ‘Keep Out’ of politics: to accept the dominance of transnational oligarchs, and to lose hope that things can change.

This is reason enough to reject apathy and disengagement. The outrageous scale of the challenge calls us to embrace our democratic role as citizens, to join our forces and fight for real change. For all their ruthless cynicism and common methods, the pseudo-movements manufactured by Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, the Russians and the architects of Brexit can only thrive in a vacuum. They dissolve when confronted with genuine people power. 

Bannon, Nix, the Mercers and Facebook will soon have many more questions to answer. Yet Cambridge Analytica cannot be allowed to be the scapegoat for our broken system. Its successes came from its extraordinary access to data, money and power; but it was simply exploiting the back doors in our democracies which irresponsible elites and Silicon Valley had left wide open.

In an early 2016 email thread, Cambridge Analytica scientists talk matter-of-factly about using illicit Facebook likes to build ‘lookalike’ models, months after they were supposed to have deleted all their Facebook data; but one writes that their approach “is not competitive with relatively simple processes that Google and Facebook provide using the wealth of their data”.

Nix modelled his data barony deliberately on the worst excesses of Silicon Valley, while exploiting the loopholes in their platforms to the full. It is long past time for us to learn the larger lesson. The internet giants must do all they can to fix their failings and better serve their users; but they cannot really flourish until their inevitable excesses are reined in by democracy.
Kaiser has given detailed testimony to Parliament about Cambridge Analytica’s retention of tainted Facebook data. We have no visibility into what she told US authorities. The Federal Trade Commission is reported to be considering imposing an “unprecedented” fine on Mark Zuckerberg’s empire, which has also been indicted by Washington DC’s attorney general for facilitating the breach of users’ data without our consent.

Every expert I know believes that the Cambridge Analytica breach was just the tip of the iceberg: my investigation found evidence that other huge ‘friend databases’ were similarly extracted from Facebook and weaponised for political use. Last year I co-founded the Freedom From Facebook campaign calling for Zuckerberg’s near-monopoly control of social messaging data to be broken up; we were immediately targeted with disinformation by Facebook’s own negative PR firm, Definers Public Affairs. Definers is run by notorious Republican ‘opposition researchers’ from the political action committee America Rising, which even hosted a joint Christmas party with Cambridge Analytica in 2015.

Brittany Kaiser initially hoped Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg would turn out to be benevolent oligarchs. Last year she launched a petition calling for them to allow Facebook’s users to own their own data, asking them to learn and change. They have shown no signs of doing either. As a result, ‘Facebookistan’ now has its own leakers and whistleblowers. In recent months, new revelations have shone savage new light on Facebook’s bartering and exposure of user data.

I spoke on the phone with Kaiser shortly before Christmas. “I was being too nice,” she said. “It gets worse every day. You can’t fix it now, it’s not fixable, not in its current form. Break it up with anti-trust laws. Pull away WhatsApp and Instagram… reorganise their business model. It’s completely out of control, and they never thought anything would happen. They’re not really keeping any of it secret; it’s all in the open, but they thought nobody would notice or care.”

Instead of the scapegoat, Cambridge Analytica should be the canary in the coalmine. The urgency is clear: we must secure and renew our democracies. That means closing every loophole that enables the laundering of money and data; encouraging mass participation; and establishing strict safeguards against political meddling by billionaires and underworld operatives (both foreign and domestic). We also have to start building a social contract around data that properly respects the digital human rights of citizens, giving us ownership individually and collectively.

If data is the new oil – a social resource of extraordinary value and danger – then we ought to put it in the hands of the many, not the few, with appropriate safeguards against abuse. If we can build a new wave of technologies that are more deserving of the public’s trust, we will be laying the foundations of a 21st-century commonwealth: a future in which this cornucopia of technology can finally start to be harnessed for the good of all. We need a New Deal for the internet age.

Update, 29 January 2019: This article has been amended to reflect the fact Channel 4 News also broke the story about Christopher Wylie’s whistleblowing.
 

The post ‘They were planning on stealing the election’: Explosive new tapes reveal Cambridge Analytica CEO’s boasts of voter suppression, manipulation and bribery appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Press Freedom Under Severe Attack in Bastar 

The Chhattisgarh police recently detained three journalists- Siddharthya Roy, a journalist working with The Diplomat, veteran journalist Kamal Shukla and video journalist Bhushan Choudhari. All three had travelled to Narayanpur to cover the run-up to the state Assembly elections scheduled for November 12. They were detained for eight hours. And only let off after significant pressure from human rights activists across the country.

Narayanpur is part of Bastar in Chhattisgarh and has been a hot-bed of Naxalite activity.

What do the people of Bastar want?
In an exclusive chat with Sabrang, Kamal Shukla talks to us about his experience, and clarifies misconceptions around the electoral process in Bastar. He also talks about the challenges villagers face and myths around the notion of ‘development’ in the area.

पुलिसिया वातावरण में पत्रकारिता : कमल शुक्ल

It must be noted that earlier this year, Kamal Shukla was booked on charges of sedition, adding him to the long list of journalists against whom the Chhattisgarh government has slapped spurious sedition charges.

Kamal Shukla starts by asking a basic question that is central to enforcing democratic institutions in the region, he says it is important to ask what do the people of Bastar want, “Do they want to get connected to the democratic systems/ institutions? Do they consider themselves citizens of India?”

In this connection he recollects the experience of his journey to the remote villages of Chhattisgarh, usually disconnected from the imagination of ‘development’ in the name of ‘Naxalite activity.’

“A couple of years ago, the people were hesitant to talk to journalists. But this time they surrounded us to talk to us,” noted Shukla while vividly describing every small detail.

He says, when he reached the villages, the people asked if he and the others had come as a representative of the government of India.

“If you have come as a representative then please send across our message that we want to participate in the elections, we want to vote,” they said. But they lamented, “The polling booths should be close to where we stay. Why do they ask us to travel 40-50 kilometres [in order to vote]?”

Shukla strongly feels that booth shifting is a mechanism to completely destroy the democratic institutions of the region and strongly claims in that Adivasis are indeed interested in casting their votes.
“It’s completely false to say that the areas in which Maoists are active, voting doesn’t happen or that people aren’t interested to vote.”

Shukla says that as people start talking, they complain that there are so many issues; the roads are in dilapidated condition, no school teacher comes to teach in the schools. However, these find no mention in the contesting parties’ manifestos. All manifestos talk about construction of roads, that too not for the villagers but for the armed forces to be conveniently able to travel inside.

“It’s the government that’s preventing people from becoming a part of the democracy —- and the mainstream,” he alleges.

“Interestingly the people who said this (demanded to vote) were the same young boys and girls who had even been captured on accusations of naxalism. If they were with the Maoists then why would they put forth such a demand?” asks Shukla.

He highlights the issue of false cases, in which police issues a press release about a certain Adivasi saying how they are Maoists. However, in 98% of such cases people are acquitted.

Shukla’s trysts with Police at Narayanpur
He relates the experience to how they were treated when they went to Narayanpur, “When we were stopped in Narayanpur, our cameras were snatched away in an unconstitutional manner.”Despite showing their identity documents to the police, they weren’t allowed to go and were informed that the police officials were waiting for some ‘senior officer’. The guest reporter, Siddharthya Roy, asked them to take them to these ‘higher officials.’ They were then taken to the Superintendent of Police’s (SP) office only by 9 pm after significant amount of pressure. The data from their memory cards was copied and a recovery software was run to find deleted files. They were repeatedly told that if they had sought permission then they would not have to face such problems.  Needless to say that nowhere in the world are journalists expected to take permission from any authorities to report from the ground.

In this context, Shukla recalls an interesting conversation with the SP from this visit.

SP Jiten Shukla: “You know, the journalists of Narayanpur are very good..they work as per our wishes”

Kamal Shukla: “Sir can you elaborate, how?”

SP Jiten Shukla: “Whatever we say they comply by it, agree to it”

A media Black hole
“I would say the condition of media in Bastar is that there is no media! There is the local media which reports from the ground. No established media houses want to give the journalists of Bastar a decent salary. Hence they have to work like contractors, they need to find other sources of livelihood,” said Shukla while talking about the plight of the local journalists.

“They have a lot of compulsions and work under a lot of pressures, they can’t defy the police,” he adds.

Shukla feels that the journalists in Bastar don’t have an alternative. Interestingly, he says, the news is always about the two development blocks in Narayanpur. If one pays attention to the stories from this area, only these two blocks are mentioned, there’s no mention of Abujhmad villages, another area in which the Naxalites are active.

“Since there is no media in these villages, the political parties don’t even go in these areas to campaign,” he adds.

This has led to a complete isolation of the people from these villages from the democractic procedures and mechanisms. “You have kept an entire population away from the ‘festival of democracy’ then how can you say that the people are not interested to vote?

Highlighting the existing conditions, he says that the Abujhmad area has not been surveyed, number of people, voters etc. isn’t known to the government.

Contrary to ‘popular’ perception, that Naxalites seem to be coercing villagers into not voting, Shukla says, “It is totally wrong to say that because of Naxalites’ boycott of the elections, people of Bastar don’t cast their votes.”

“Government shouldn’t approach the people only when they need votes, they should go otherwise too,” he adds.

He feels the best way to deal with this is to “implement constitution”. He adds that government has not shown any interest in implementing the PESA, 5^th Schedule or 6^th Schedule in these villages.
Shukla comes to a conclusion that the situation is not fit in Bastar to have a democratic and fair election.

“Governance had been removed from villages and shifted towards cities while the villages have been militarised and more and more armed forces have been left even in the interiors and remote corners.”
 

Related:
https://sabrangindia.in/article/election-watch-chhattisgarh-nobody-knows-modi-raman-singh-or-development-remote-areas
https://sabrangindia.in/article/election-watch-chhattisgarh-no-media-no-news-only-evms-and-governments
 

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