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Tuju reveals unfortunate things that happened during presidential campaigns

Uhuru's team was accused of using a data firm to run smear campaigns against Raila Odinga.

Speaking to UK’s Channel 4 News, Mr Tuju dismissed reports that the Jubilee Party engaged a data mining firm Cambridge Analytica and Harris Media to run damaging smear campaigns adverts on Facebook against Opposition chief Raila Odinga.

Tuju now agrees that the country ran one of the most polarized campaigns, whose impact would have been more devastating than that of 2007 and 2008 post-election violence.

“It is very unfortunate that we had that kind of campaign. This was not the first time, it was in a campaigns process in 2007 which resulted in post-election violence which was more violent than what we have had last year,” Mr Tuju told .

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The party secretary general further clarified that the Jubilee in the near future would be reconsidering its stand and is mooting at changing its key tactics in campaigns to have a transition in strategies.

"We are as a party hoping that we can make that transition from the very ethnic polarized campaign to a more policy and issues driven campaign," he added.

He further said that the Jubilee team had not way of stopping the gravely damaging smear campaigns against Opposition chief Raila Odinga, which portrayed Mr Odinga as a violent person.

Legal redress

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On his part, however, Mr Odinga had said he would sue Cambridge Analytica and Facebook over the fiasco and interference with the democratic process in many counties.

In an interview with British Channel 4 TV, the station that exposed the data firm bragging to its undercover reporter of having fixed the Kenyan elections for President Uhuru Kenyatta in both 2013 and 2017, Mr Odinga said he will sue both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

“I am disappointed that Facebook agreed to cooperate in this clandestine enterprise. I have been very disappointed, and we are actually contemplating legal action against Facebook.

“We will do it outside Kenya with Kenyan lawyers and others from outside,” he told Channel 4 News, calling for legislation to stop such further infringement in Kenya.

The videos and the divisive campaigns that reportedly started in 2013 have since been linked to British firm Cambridge Analytica and Harris Media, with the former said to have mined personal information from social media giant Facebook to craft  and target personalised messages at voters.

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