I SAW Terrence Campbell and Ganesh Mahipal in conversation with David Hinds in a social media programme last week. I got bored after 25 minutes but I would have faced moral dishonesty if I didn’t continue. How can I be a social analyst and not listen to what important political actors have to say? It is my job, and if I had turned off after 25 minutes, then I wouldn’t have been doing my job.

So, I went for the full hour, and what I saw and heard caused the coffee to spill and burn my leg. The ignorance was extensive and the ignorance came about because these two APNU parliamentarians do not do research, and that is an unforgivable sin in politics because how are you going to serve the nation when you get up in parliament and you talk about things that are incredibly inaccurate.

With the coffee burning my leg, I felt no pain because I jumped so high with joy that I got stuck and couldn’t come back down. I now have material to write ten columns on the unlimited ignorance that came out of the mouths of these two APNU parliamentarians that belong to the PNC. This analysis here is Part One.

I was laughing when Campbell stressed the point that leaders from different parties do not have to like each other to form a coalition. He said the bigger object is your mutual enemy (my words). He then gave the example of British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and the USSR leader, Josep Stalin coming together at Yalta to join to fight Hitler.

Campbell did not know that what he said was completely inaccurate. Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta in 1945 to decide the fate of Germany that was defeated and the post-war shape of Europe. I read about the Yalta Agreement when I was a 17-year-old youth working in the PPP’s bookstore named Michael Forde Bookstore. But interestingly, Hinds nor Mahipal intervened to correct Campbell.  Come on, Terrence, you cannot make egregious mistakes about one of civilisation’s most important moments.

Campbell went on to boast that he spent more money on charitable causes than Azruddin Mohamed. When he said that, I remembered what Ravi Dev said on the Freddie Kissoon Show, that Campbell is probably a billionaire with more franchises in Guyana than the Beharrys.

When Campbell said that, I was annoyed because I wrote two columns last year asking him to reimburse me the $600 he owes me. I am still to receive the money. This situation involved my paying $960 for an ice cream cone at Campbell’s fast-food outlet at the Giftland Mall.

I didn’t know the cone would have been so unbelievably expensive; I just asked for a cone and gave a $1000 bill to the cashier. She gave me back $40 change and went to serve the cone. I am not prepared to pay $960 for an ice cream cone. I will go as far as $360 (at Banks DIH it is $160 – yes, it is). Campbell reads me, so he is still to give me my $600. I repeat, I will take it because I know homeless folks I give money to that can use it.

When it comes to Mahipal, he made a startling revelation on the programme. He said one of the reasons the APNU did not do that good at the 2025 elections was because campaign money was a problem.  But how could money have been a problem when the chairman of the PNC at the time, Sherwin Holder said on the Freddie Kissoon Show that billions would have come in to the PNC, particularly from Africa, but the donors wanted the younger generation of PNC leaders to lead the PNC into the elections.

He cited himself and Amanza Walton-Desir. If Holder is right, then money was not the problem for the PNC but choice of leadership. Now if Campbell admitted that he probably spent more money on charitable causes than Azruddin Mohamed, then did he pour the amount into the PNC that exceeded what Mohamed put into WIN?

Attorney-General Anil Nandlall said on the Freddie Kissoon Show that never in the history of the Commonwealth has there been a political party that used money to get votes the way Mohamed did in Guyana in the 2025 elections. So, let’s do the logical deduction. If Mohamed poured an incredible amount into WIN’s campaign, and Campbell has wealth that enabled him to exceed the spending that Mohamed did on charitable endeavours, then it is logical to assume that money was not a problem for APNU in the 2025 elections.

Look out for more columns on the abominable nonsense that Hinds, Campbell and Mahipal spouted last week.       

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.