At 52, Colin Campbell, a former journalist, could hardly have expected to see a headline discussing his ‘fall’.

Neither could he have imagined that in the short space of five days one incident would have resulted in such a tumultuous change in his political life, and surely not his resignation as information and development minister and general-secretary of his ruling People’s National Party (PNP).

In what is mere coincidence, Colin Campbell entered Parliament in 1993, the same year that eight international oil trading firms came together to form Trafigura Beheer, with headquarters in Switzerland but domiciled in The Netherlands.

Campbell could not know that 13 years later, Trafigura would be the cause of his demise at the height of a scandal that has thrown the PNP into turmoil and given Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller her worst headache since taking office in March this year.

Campbell’s rise began somewhere in the 1970s, a period of intense ideological conflicts pitting the Opposition JLP led by the conservative Edward Seaga against the Democratic Socialist PNP, headed by the firebrand Michael Manley.

Manley’s thrust to have close relations between countries of the Third World – called South-South co-operation – resulted in an oil deal with Nigeria, the oil that Trafigura would begin to lift and sell on the international market for Jamaica in 2000.

Campbell, like most young journalists at the time, was caught up in the political ferment of the 1970s. As a boy he had come to Kingston from Manchester at the age of 12, with his father, a businessman, and his mother, a teacher, to attend Calabar High School. It was there that he felt attracted to journalism and on leaving school in 1973, he joined the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC), the state-owned radio and television complex which the RJR Group bought out in 1997.

The JBC newsroom was split between Marxists-Leninists supporting Trevor Munroe’s Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ), Manley’s Democratic Socialists and Seaga’s Labourites. Seaga would later describe it as a Communist “cesspool”.

At 25 years old, Campbell, working as a sub-editor, was called from the JBC to be press secretary to Prime Minister Manley in early 1980, replacing the well-known playwright, Louis Marriott.

The PNP lost the October 30, 1980 general elections and Campbell returned to the JBC that same year. But misfortune was awaiting him. The following year, the JBC, now under JLP management, fired him, along with 12 other journalists from the newsroom. The move was meant to get rid of Communists but no distinction was made between them.

In March 1982, the JBC easily lost the ensuing court battle on the basis of wrongful dismissal, and the journalists all received a hefty $500,000 settlement.

Campbell teamed up with husband and wife duo of the same name, Carl and Monica Campbell, as well as Basil Parker, former colleagues at JBC, to start Communication Services.

The company is remembered for the devastating election commercial showing Karl Samuda breaking the JLP’s ‘V’ sign and declaring Seaga a despot, during his relatively brief dalliance with the PNP when Seaga drove him out of the JLP in the infamous Gang of Five affair.

During the 1980s, too, Campbell became treasurer of the Press Association of Jamaica where he showed signs of a likely career in politics. He played an active role in the PNP leading up to its return to power, again with Manley at the helm, in the 1989 general elections.

In 1993, he threw his hat in the ring for the East St Andrew seat on the PNP ticket, defeating the JLP’s Edmund Bartlett. He thrashed the unfortunate Bartlett again in the 1997 elections.

While in government, Campbell held several junior and senior positions including parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Water and Transport; minister of state in the Ministry of Public Utilities and Transport; junior minister in the Ministry of Local Government, Youth and Community Development, junior minister of industry and commerce and information minister.

But in 2002, with violence rocking his constituency and amid accusations of arrogance by some of his constituents, Campbell was trounced by the JLP and seemingly banished into the political wilderness. Yet, that was not the end for Colin Campbell.

He succeeded Burchell Whiteman as PNP general-secretary in 2005, after serving as the former information minister’s deputy. Early this year, he took leave of absence to throw his support behind Portia Simpson Miller in the fractious party presidential elections occasioned by the resignation of Prime Minister and PNP President P J Patterson. Simpson Miller won the elections and became Jamaica’s first woman prime minister. And Colin Campbell was back.

The new PM named him a senator in the place of Whiteman and immediately after appointed him to his old portfolio of information minister, adding development to it.

In the months since, Campbell appeared to be the most powerful man in Portia’s Cabinet, figuring in all the important decisions and events. Some said he was the de facto deputy prime minister and that Simpson Miller did not make a move without him. For Campbell, it was a fairytale rise.

Then on October 3, 2006 everything began to unravel. Furiously.

As PNP MPs were getting ready to censure Karl Samuda in the House, Bruce Golding, the JLP leader, dropped a bombshell. He revealed information that an account named CCOC and linked to Campbell, had received $31 million from Trafigura, which has an oil contract with the state-run Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica. Golding claimed hanky panky was afoot.

The information was leaked, allegedly from FirstCaribbean International Bank, setting off a fierce debate about a breach of banking confidentiality. Campbell denied anything shady was involved in what was a gift from Trafigura. But the company later denied it had made any gift to the PNP, saying it had a commercial arrangement with CCOC, later revealed to mean ‘Colin Campbell Our Candidate’.

PNP chairman Bobby Pickersgill and party legal advisor A J Nicholson strenuously defended the Trafigura money. But with public disgust mounting over the appearance of corruption – a political party had received money from a company working for the government – Campbell came under intense pressure to resign for his central role in the affair.

Campbell admitted he had met with the Trafigura men in August, but denied that his meeting was in New York. It was held in Jamaica he said.

Party lawyers accused him of not giving them all the relevant details of the Trafigura transaction, causing them to embarrass themselves and the party.

On the weekend of October 6, PNP big wigs were summoned from wherever they were in the world to Jamaica House. The only two items on the agenda were Campbell’s resignation/dismissal and what to do with the Trafigura money.

Campbell fought tooth and nail to hold his position. Simpson Miller did not want to see her main man go. But in the end, after gruelling hours lasting throughout Saturday and into early Sunday, Campbell was persuaded to resign and hopefully take some of the heat off the party.

Simpson Miller also instructed the party to send back the $31-million to Trafigura.

Once again, Campbell was out of a ministerial job.