THIS article criticises the politics of Dr Terrence Campbell. It is a commentary on the public manifestations of his political praxis and not any aspects of his personal life. From public accounts, Campbell has distinguished himself in education and business etc., qualities that put his accomplishments well above the average citizen for which one should not be contemptuous.
However, when it comes to Campbell’s public political meanderings and verbal contortions, the term that comes to mind is part of our local parlance that was popular when I was a child to describe the cognitively challenged, “duncyfire goat.” From the moment Campbell entered politics it has been a never-ending chain of comedic witlessness that makes Patrick Star from SpongeBob look like Albert Einstein.
Campbell’s latest dabble in the backroom of low mental effort is prominently displayed in a letter carried by Kiskadee Watch on Friday, October 23, 2026, for the world to see. In his letter, he attempted to intellectualise and put political interpretations to “Jagdeo’s overture” to the PNC to explore avenues for political co-operation.
Campbell’s letter can only start to take on shades of validity if it is properly situated in two historical time periods, 1964 and 2015. Set in today’s Guyana, Campbell is so way off course that upon reading his views, I thought he was trying to rival Odessa Primus as a comedic playwright for a booking at the Theatre Guild.
An elementary concept in Guyanese politics that many activists do not understand is that a smattering of views from among your rabid support base and those in your political echo chamber do not constitute either the voice of the majority or a political pattern. With the lack of scientific polling in Guyana, our politics is almost exclusively dependent on hard evidence. The dominant form of hard evidence in Guyana for understanding our political realities are election results.
For example, leading up to the 1964 election, Dr Jagan and the PPP would’ve been justified if they had tried to make overtures of co-operation to any of the opposition parties over fears of joint opposition displacement. He had two sets of election results to go on, 1953 and 1961. Both showed clear voting patterns that a combined opposition was in a position to displace the PPP. For this reason, the PPP opted out of certain constituencies while urging its support base to vote TUF to avoid a three-way split, which would’ve benefitted the PNC. In abstaining from those constituencies, part of the calculation was that either the PPP will gain an outright win or evoke political solidarity in the TUF to team up with the PPP, perhaps to repay it for abstaining in those constituencies to guarantee a TUF win.
So, we come to 2015. Hard results from the four previous general elections showed that between 1997 to 2011 the PPP’s vote tally fell steadily from 220,667 (1997) to 210,013 (2001) to 183,887 (2006) to 166,340 (2011) and so too did the proportions, which fell from 55 per cent to 48 per cent, that is to say the combined opposition won 52 per cent of the votes in 2011. There was visible, hard evidence that would justify any PPP sentiment that a joint opposition could displace it in 2015.
So, if we threw Campbell’s sermon into a time machine and dialled it back to 2015, then he may have a point, but only if we did not have the benefit of history. The history is that even when faced with hard evidence and sitting in a minority government, the PPP did not entertain talks with either the PNC or AFC, either of which could have saved the government. So, if it does not come from some form unassuming approbation, why would the PPP seek cordiality with the PNC one year after it obtained an unassailable electoral lead and at a time when the PNC is most vulnerable?
This brings us to 2026 and Campbell’s ill-shaped political fantasy about the 2030-31 general and regional elections. We have had hard results from the last four elections: 2018 LGEs, 2020 General, 2023 LGEs and 2025 General, none of which points to the need for desperation by the PPP to drive it to make overtures to anyone or any opposition formation.
Though nonsensical, Campbell probably should have stuck with his earlier argument of imaginative fiction, that is to say, the “PPP’s diabolical use of resources” to woo voters. If anything, the hard results show that if the PPP strategically applies resources under its charge to penetrate the country, it can, in so many ways, ensure further destabilisation and decimation of the PNC.
In its current form, the PNC is a sitting duck without a modicum of resistance. But by some intergalactic leap, Campbell sees a PPP trembling in its boots at the thought of being overcome by a combined opposition. What opposition? Is it the same combined opposition that, only a year ago, went down by seven seats to the PPP? There is no objective condition that has changed to suggest that the opposition has attracted any new body of support or that the PPP has lost an ounce of its voting base. Campbell is sitting in the place of an autumn leaf telling the tree trunk to be afraid of the impending winter.
I believe Campbell genuinely does not understand the political landscape of Guyana, and he is “trying a thing” to appear noble, but the worst form of deception is self-deception and the worst form of lack of knowledge is wilful ignorance gilded in sophistry.
The exposure of his ignorance cannot be more glaring, which the following two examples will show. Campbell seems not to understand that every time principals of the PNC sermonises its support base that a coalition is the only way PNC can win an election, is a signal that the PNC has accepted defeat before the start of play. The built-in message is, whenever the PNC cannot achieve a viable coalition its support base must bolt or stay home because it cannot win. That is exactly what happened in 2025: the support base of the PNC did not see a coalition materialise and they concluded that the PNC can never beat the PPP, so they bolted to Azruddin because he appeared to have greater momentum.
One year on, and Campbell still has not learned that if the PNC keeps up that message, they are boxing themselves into a corner where they can’t get votes while operating in any uncoalesced formation.
In November 2014, when the PPP prorogued parliament and called general and regional elections, sent a clear signal to their support base that they believe the PPP can win it alone. The second scenario that demonstrates Campbell’s poor comprehension is this weekend’s Conversation Tree. Ramkarran’s piece is a friendly but firm chastisement and dismissal of Campbell’s outpouring, yet Campbell found it convenient to repost the piece with gloating pride.
Finally, for the combined opposition to win in 2030-31, it has to dislodge at least four seats from the PPP. The historical voting pattern suggests that the majority of those who vote for the PPP in every election right up to 2025 did so through deep-seated love for the PPP as a brand and strong sentiments for its leaders which give expression to their racial identity.
The current campaign of hate that is being perpetuated by Azruddin Mohamed, Terrence Campbell, Apostle London, Sherod Duncan, David Hinds and other mainstream political operatives coupled with that of ‘unattached’ commentators like Mark Benschop, Rickford Burke, Melly Mell and Norman Browne, together with strong support from the new media like the Kiskadee Watch and the Village Voice backed up by some ‘civil-society organisations.’ How will they attract and win over PPP supporters? With what message?