Ken Ali

Just over a week af­ter he was de­nied en­try in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go as an "un­de­sir­able alien," Bernard Camp­bell is back in the em­brace of op­po­si­tion politi­cians. Camp­bell qui­et­ly re­turned af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph lift­ed a con­tro­ver­sial no-en­try or­der. The Amer­i­can po­lit­i­cal strate­gist held a lengthy closed-door ses­sion with pub­lic re­la­tions ad­vi­sors of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) yes­ter­day. He had re­turned to T&T "a few hours ear­li­er," said an of­fi­cial of the op­po­si­tion al­liance. He said that Camp­bell was "in very good spir­its" and "anx­ious to get down to work."

Camp­bell was the prime pre­sen­ter at yes­ter­day's ses­sion at Ch­agua­nas.

UNC and COP of­fi­cials re­mained tightlipped about how long the strate­gist would re­main in T&T. His re­turn to the coun­try fol­lowed the re­ver­sal of an ear­li­er Min­istry or­der to de­bar his en­try. Camp­bell, who was a mem­ber of a core of cam­paign strate­gist of US Pres­i­dents Barack Oba­ma and Bill Clin­ton, was re­fused en­try in­to the coun­try two Thurs­days ago. He was at­tempt­ing to re­turn to T&T fol­low­ing a brief trip to his home­land. The Min­istry said Camp­bell had breached a sec­tion of the Im­mi­gra­tion Act. His vir­tu­al de­por­ta­tion sparked a po­lit­i­cal firestorm, The US au­thor­i­ties asked for an ex­pla­na­tion of the move.