Duterte denies tapping Cambridge Analytica

DAVAO CITY  , Philippines  — He may be technologically challenged, but President Duterte says he does not need political consulting firms such as Cambridge Analytica to win an election.

Duterte maintained he engaged in traditional campaigning that led to his eventual landslide victory.

“I have no Cambridge-Cambridge, Oxford… just went into the traditional campaigning, that’s simple,” Duterte told a gathering after his arrival from China and Hong Kong yesterday.

Duterte recalled that he had appealed to Filipinos to vote for him if they want him as a leader or just reject him if they don’t want somebody like him to become president. 

That was the message of his last campaign at Rizal Park in Manila, Duterte said.

Repeating his pitches during the 2016 campaign, Duterte said he told his audience to choose between a strong personality like him or a God-fearing candidate, who would hesitate to launch an honest-to-goodness drug war.

Duterte said he was candid and up front about his strategy during the campaign – with no pretensions –which apparently was the reason he won the presidency.

Duterte denied tapping online political strategists for his campaign in the May 2016 presidential polls.

Earlier, photos showing two of Duterte’s campaign advisers dining with Cambridge Analytica official Alexander Nix surfaced, raising suspicions that the consultancy firm influenced the outcome of the 2016 elections. 

Pompee La Viña, one of the campaign advisers in the photo, has denied tapping the services of Cambridge Analytica and insisted that Nix just sat down with his group during a 2015 event in Manila.  

Malacañang has denied the Duterte campaign team had transacted with the consultancy firm and has insisted that the President won the election “fair and square.”

The government is investigating social media giant Facebook over reports of a massive data breach involving Cambridge Analytica. 

A whistle-blower earlier claimed Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested data which were subsequently used in the campaign of US President Donald Trump in 2016. 

Reports also surfaced that Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL (Strategic Communications Laboratories) was involved in the Philippine presidential elections in 2016, although it was unclear if the illegally harvested data were used. 

In fact, one of its officers had visited the country.   – Christina Mendez