Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The re­jec­tion or­der against US po­lit­i­cal strate­gist Bernard Camp­bell has been can­celled by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. This was con­firmed yes­ter­day in a re­lease by the min­istry, mo­ments af­ter Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph told the me­dia at Bal­isi­er House that the can­cel­la­tion would take place soon. Joseph tried to evade the me­dia, but even­tu­al­ly spoke for less than two min­utes be­fore he was dri­ven away. Ac­cord­ing to him, Camp­bell was de­nied en­try in­to this coun­try be­cause the cir­cum­stances un­der which he came "were not prop­er­ly done."

Mean­while, the re­lease re­vealed "the facts" re­gard­ing Camp­bell's de­nial of en­try. It said he came to the coun­try on April 15, de­clar­ing he would be here on busi­ness. How­ev­er, one day lat­er he was in­tro­duced by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the per­son head­ing her elec­tion cam­paign. Ad­ver­tis­ing firm, Ernie Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing, Ltd was the en­ti­ty charged with con­tract­ing Camp­bell's firm. "This dis­clo­sure by the Op­po­si­tion Leader that Mr Camp­bell was here to work was at vari­ance with his of­fi­cial de­c­la­ra­tion that he was here on busi­ness," the re­lease stat­ed. As the me­dia ques­tioned Joseph all at once, seek­ing his com­ments, he re­spond­ed by say­ing an Ex­press re­port made him out "in a way in which I am ar­ro­gant, so that I have ab­solute­ly no com­ment to make." His voice was drowned out by the voic­es of the me­dia per­son­nel.

Joseph pro­ceed­ed to close the door of his ve­hi­cle, but when pressed fur­ther for his com­ments, he said: "Ba­si­cal­ly, let me tell you what hap­pened. "First of all, it was quite clear that the cir­cum­stances un­der which Mr Camp­bell came in­to the coun­try was not prop­er­ly...was not prop­er­ly done. "I kind of sum­maris­ing...not prop­er­ly done. "What we now have done is that we have now in­formed both his prospec­tive em­ploy­er about what it is that they need to do, in or­der to make sure that he can prop­er­ly op­er­ate in the coun­try. "We have done that. The min­istry would have done that, and I ex­pect that the prospec­tive em­ploy­er will do what is nec­es­sary. "So that there are two things. The min­istry will now can­cel the re­strict­ing or­der. "They will do the nec­es­sary thing as it re­lates to al­low him to le­git­i­mate­ly come in and do what­ev­er func­tion that he is re­quired to per­form."

Asked why Camp­bell was deemed an "un­de­sir­able in­hab­i­tant," Joseph said the cir­cum­stances un­der which Camp­bell en­tered the coun­try were not in keep­ing with the laws of the land. The re­lease said up­on recog­nis­ing the dis­crep­an­cy, the chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer wrote to the ad­ver­tis­ing firm, re­quest­ing a meet­ing with Mr Ross and Camp­bell with of­fi­cials to clar­i­fy Camp­bell's im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus. How­ev­er, Camp­bell left the coun­try on April 19. Camp­bell was pre­vi­ous­ly in the coun­try and held talks with Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He was part of the team that as­sist­ed the cam­paign in which US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma was elect­ed in­to of­fice. He ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go last Thurs­day, but was or­dered out on Fri­day morn­ing.

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The re­lease added that it had in­formed Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Charge d'Af­faires of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, Len Kus­nitz, of the de­ci­sion to can­cel im­me­di­ate­ly the re­jec­tion or­der against Camp­bell. It added: "The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has a du­ty to en­sure that the laws are up­held, re­gard­less of who the in­di­vid­ual is or which or­gan­i­sa­tion that in­di­vid­ual rep­re­sents." The state­ment al­so is­sued a warn­ing to po­lit­i­cal par­ties of the oblig­a­tions of any per­son, oth­er than a cit­i­zen or res­i­dent, as it's re­lat­ed to their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the na­tion­al elec­tions process as con­tained in the laws of the land.