By GHK Lall- Dr. Terrence Campbell wrote something the other day that nudged a memory. It was about a young man calling him, sharing warmly with him around August, 2020, the beginning of the wrenching post-elections traumas. I remember that same young man, a Guyanese younger than his years, speaking well of Terrence Campbell. He is President Irfaan Ali. Dr. Campbell was golden in the eyes of the PPP Government, the government’s calculators, its movers and arrangers.
Today, the same Campbell is as good as sawdust of the most destitute quality, according to the same PPP. Something went wrong, tore things apart. What was it, I ask? What it is, I share with citizens. Whoever has a mind willing to be exercised in a straight line should have no difficulty appreciating what Guyanese have for a government, who they live with as leaders.
Terrence Campbell’s troubles started when he broke a cardinal rule for those enjoying some type of hospitable relationship with the PPP Government and its masterminds.
He spoke. In speaking, he objected. In objecting in the public domain, he condemned himself to the ranks of the Guyanese made into enemies by one starry-eyed maestro named Bharrat Jagdeo (Dr.) and another Guyanese member of the PPP illuminati who answers to the handle of Mohamed Irfaan Ali (Dr. too).
When a Guyanese has been declared an enemy by the PPP (government or party or leadership), it is as a sworn one, a lifelong one. It is said that hell hath no fury like a sister scorned. Wherever that originated, a correction is in order: hell hath no heat like the PPP jilted, distanced from, exposed.
The exposure came from Campbell and had to do with the portentous sounding Natural Resource Fund of this nation. In a more down-to-earth description, that bank account is the Guyanese people money, their lifeline, with so much of their present and their future housed in it. It should be managed more courageously. It should not be seen as a PPP Government petty cash box, or an account where the ruling party is a joint holder.
When I speak of government, then party, with PPP mentioned interchangeably, all I ask Guyanese to make the effort to separate the two, and see for themselves how well they fare. When Dr. Campbell spoke and wrote of what the people’s Oil Fund is now: a plaything, a piggybank, of the PPP, he went from well-wisher and a Guyanese worth cultivating, to a target with a big bulls-eye on his back. An inviting target for all to take aim. They did.
He went from successful businessman to the sullied station of a fried chicken man, according to the erudite Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo. In my book, once Campbell is honest and credible in whatever he does (even selling snails and skunks), then that is what counts. I urge Dr. Jagdeo to look around in a tight arc, and decide how much of that [honest and credible] he could say about his circle, not leaving out anyone. From that low, things went lower.
The man’s health situation became an exhibition on social media, thanks to the energetic efforts of those who are related to the PPP in general, and count Jagdeo as their hero. Is there nothing too low for the PPP, where its goons will not go? I think the best person to answer that question is Mohamed Irfaan Ali. Be it as someone who claims an affinity with the teachings originating out of Mecca, or as a man who may still have a streak of honor left, and which could be found.
The rainy-day money needs oversight saturated with the best in prudence. Soldiers who stand with strength and sagacity. And that indefinable something called an unconquerable will. Soldiers who are brave, and not ones who love being Cadillac comrades and lavender and lilac stewards. Soldiers keeping guard over something as precious, as sacred, as the nation’s oil bank, must be made of steel and not stamps constructed of any ramshackle material that crumbles to the touch.
When Terrence Campbell dared to speak and write, he crossed a fateful Rubicon. Any Guyanese who makes that crossing should know that he or she cannot turn back. But they can turn to leaders and stare them in the face, and stare them down. They can turn and look in the mirror, and breathe a sigh of thanksgiving for what they see, being the way that they are.
No champagne, no caviar, no companionship, can hold a candle to that state of mind, that self-respect. I encourage the small fraternity and sorority of Guyanese presiding over the Oil Fund, boards and commissions, panels and projects to think of these things, and then measure where they stand, and what they must do. A man can gain all the money, all the pride of place, that the world of Guyana (the PPP world) has to offer. What do all those things matter, when all they do is reduce to a charlatan, a lout in a suit, a soul lost to the siren call of cowardice, of representing the dishonouring.
