Re­cent hasty moves by Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith and his Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) coun­ter­part Phillip Alexan­der to align them­selves with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have raised more than a few eye­brows na­tion­al­ly, with po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst In­di­ra Ram­per­sad apt­ly de­scrib­ing the ac­tions as 'crab in a bar­rel' be­hav­iour.

And while we are not about to tell Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar what she should and should not do, we stand on the side of those who are very scep­ti­cal about the po­lit­i­cal in­ten­tions of these two men and about whether they have any­thing of re­al ben­e­fit to of­fer the UNC.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader would there­fore do well to tread care­ful­ly on any al­liance with ei­ther the NTA or PEP at this time.

Un­doubt­ed­ly Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is aware of the need for such cau­tion, which could ex­plain her state­ment two weeks ago, which an­gered Mr Grif­fith, to the ef­fect that she would not al­low mi­nor par­ties to dic­tate terms to the UNC ahead of the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions cam­paign, while call­ing on them to demon­strate what they could bring to the ta­ble.

The NTA leader, who re­cent­ly ex­pressed con­fi­dence in his par­ty's abil­i­ty to ral­ly the sup­port of 200,000 vot­ers, swift­ly fired back at Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar but prompt­ly calmed down when he dis­cov­ered that cer­tain high-rank­ing mem­bers of the UNC were in­clined to sup­port him over Mr Alexan­der in any po­lit­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion.

At the same time, Mr Alexan­der, who spent the ma­jor­i­ty of the last five years crit­i­cis­ing the UNC as be­ing no dif­fer­ent from the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), ap­peared to have gone in­to pan­ic mode and did pre­cise­ly what Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar had told the small­er par­ties not to do, by giv­ing the UNC an ul­ti­ma­tum to choose be­tween him and Mr Grif­fith.

Since then, the PEP leader has seem­ing­ly had a change of heart and is now say­ing that he is will­ing to work with Gary–the same man he want­ed ab­solute­ly to do with less than a week pri­or and was dead-set against hav­ing as an al­liance part­ner.

We can on­ly hope that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC will see these po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions for ex­act­ly what they are.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so needs to ask and an­swer for her­self what ex­act­ly are the proven track records of Gary and Phillip, and how can they help the UNC po­lit­i­cal­ly at this time.

Al­so, can the UNC trust ei­ther of these men, or will their loy­al­ties whit­tle away, based on the pre­vail­ing po­lit­i­cal breeze blow­ing on any giv­en day?

Fur­ther­more, what is the ul­ti­mate wish of Gary and Phillip? Is it to ul­ti­mate­ly lead the UNC, or are they pre­pared to ac­cept a low­er sta­tus with­in the con­text of a po­lit­i­cal merg­er?

At the end of the day when all of these ques­tions are asked and an­swered, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar may well de­cide that the UNC un­der her lead­er­ship stands a bet­ter chance of de­feat­ing the PNM by go­ing it alone.

Time will tell.