OPINION: Guyana’s one-man whirlwind, a mover and shaker

Last Updated on Tuesday, 4 February 2025, 20:27 by Writer

by GHK Lall

What a difference one man can make! Terrence Campbell is his name and shaking people and things up is his claim to fame. He started out by shattering the thick blanket of silence and impotence at the Natural Resources Fund (NRF) and it has been hell on a trampoline ever since.

The PPP Government jumped up and down, and only made matters worse. Vice President Dr. Jagdeo opened his mouth and took aim at Dr. Campbell and lost some more credibility in the process. Physician, first heal thyself. Fix the missing links. The covering up of what the marching orders were to the majority of the people at the NRF by waltzing around with cheap insults and shrill screams only adds fuel to the fire. The questions on most Guyanese lips boil down to these: What is this magnificent specimen of Guyana’s always cloudy and tricky politics up to? What is there that he is so afraid of with the Oil Fund money that he has to hide behind vitriol and viciousness? It was two reeling (guvment and oil commissar) with one more set to go down. Enter Mr. Sherwyn Greaves, the headman at the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), who abruptly tendered his resignation following Dr. Campbell’s writing to the U.S. Dept of Justice calling for a look-see. It involved a property in Queens, New York, in the name of one Sherwyn Greaves. I have no idea, if the two Sherwyn Greaves are one and the same. Or completely unrelated individuals.

What is known is that the CH&PA’s chief, Mr. Sherwyn Greaves has resigned, along with a clear statement of his innocence in any wrongdoing. Mention in social media posts is a matter of the US$770,000 property. I am a firm believer in the standard that a man is innocent until proven guilty by a real court, and not some kangaroo one. Mr. Greaves is entitled to, must be given every benefit of every doubt. Having said this, I am pondering his sudden resignation. My preference is that he had stayed and fight to clear his good name. A man should only fall on his sword, if there are compelling reasons for him to do so. I wait and watch to see how this action by Dr. Campbell and the action by Mr. Greaves pan out.

Now I pause to focus (again) on Terrence Campbell. My first word, more of an appeal to him, is that whatever his vision is, his next move contemplated, that he stays away from my corner of this city. Since he hit the airwaves on how NRF frequencies operate behind the scenes (he used that telling word “rubberstamp”), he has been a one-man whirlwind. As much as many matters require shaking up and shaking out in Guyana (PPP Guyana), I am better off if he concentrates his fire there and not in this direction.

Further, I have to say something to this Guyanese whom I have never met. Straight out and flat out, his signaling the willingness to join in an opposition coalition should they ask him is a step in the wrong direction. I am all for moral and other support to the party of one’s choice, be it the PPP, the PNC, or the AFC, or all three simultaneously. The record will show that on a few occasions I have pulled off that rare feat. But other than moral and financial support, as allowed under the Guyana Constitution, that should be as far as his interest in entering politics should go. To do otherwise would be to dim his star which is on an upward trajectory. If Dr. Campbell is so interested in politics, and changing the standing obscene and corrupt culture, I urge him to form his own party, and generate some serious waves. He could rise or fall from the reception that is received. He did say a little while back that there is a sizable battalion of angry and unhappy Guyana. I would make those my target audience. From my perspective, it is a clearer and straighter path to travel. This is not a knock on the PPP, the PNC, or the AFC. Just let it be said (by me) that there are too many off-color, off-limits, and off-the-reservation characters in all three groups. To cut a sharp point on this, the characters include principals of troubling proportions.

It is perplexing to me, as to why any upright man, any citizen in clean standing, would want to stain his persuasive record by joining with any local political gang. Indeed, I am aware that Guyana is in a bad place, the unmatched and the unbelievable, under the PPP Government, and that change is needed. Dr. Campbell has shown that he has the potential to be a mover and shaker. He shook the PPP Government out of its slumber. He moved Vice President to deliver one of his Thursday afternoon orgies of verbal mayhem. And there is the development out of the CH&PA. For someone who has just returned to the always barbed wire political minefields of Guyana, Dr. Terrence Campbell certainly hit the ground running, thrown a handful of people on their heads. He should have been a judoka.