Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith says it is dis­ap­point­ing but not sur­pris­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has re­ject­ed his of­fer to as­sist Gov­ern­ment with the crime fight.

On Wednes­day, Row­ley “blanked” Grif­fith’s call to put coun­try first and give him and his team a chance to share their an­ti-crime strate­gies to make T&T safe.

Row­ley was quot­ed in an­oth­er news­pa­per as say­ing that Grif­fith, “as a ma­jor part of the prob­lem can­not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be viewed by any se­ri­ous per­son as part of the so­lu­tion”. He added that it “would be good if Grif­fith di­rects his en­thu­si­asm to the many wor­ri­some po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions which in­volve much of his trun­cat­ed ca­reer” be­tween 2020 and 2021, when much of the coun­try was un­der COVID lock­down.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so com­ment­ed about “a po­lice com­mis­sion­er who quotes the re­duc­tion in crime then, to his ge­nius, clear­ly thinks we’re all stu­pid and open to his nar­cis­sis­tic erup­tions”.

In re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­port­ed state­ment, Grif­fith said, “It’s in­deed dis­ap­point­ing but not sur­pris­ing be­cause yet again, we see what hap­pens when a man is so full of anger, hate and bit­ter­ness, he be­comes to­tal­ly out of con­trol when he can­not have his way and he for­gets every­thing per­tain­ing to the voice of the peo­ple and for­get­ting your oath of of­fice of serv­ing those peo­ple!

“I wish to clar­i­fy his mis­lead­ing com­ments, where he said I was the ma­jor part of the prob­lem. If that was the case, Kei­th, then tell me how is it that you told your Cab­i­net in ear­ly 2021 that you wish you could get ten Gary Grif­fiths to fix T&T or words to that ef­fect?

“Al­so, it was your mi­ni-me Fitzger­ald Hinds who said if the TTPS could op­er­ate at just 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty of what I was do­ing, this place would be fixed. And it was you again, Kei­th, who di­rect­ed your act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to amend the law to have me re­main as com­mis­sion­er be­cause I nev­er put a clause as I was ready to leave af­ter three years! So how come you see those things as I was part of the prob­lem?”

Grif­fith dis­missed as fool­ish Row­ley’s com­ment on COVID, say­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, crime was high in Ja­maica, Guyana and US cities and af­ter COVID there was a mas­sive de­crease.

He de­scribed as “an­oth­er lie”, claims that there were more re­ports of po­lice mis­con­duct and crim­i­nal acts than ever be­fore un­der his watch.

Grif­fith claimed that af­ter four years of “cos­met­ic au­dits,” find­ings and re­ports of “mas­sive well-oiled ma­chin­ery”, no one has been charged.

“Just like Email­gate, you ac­cuse peo­ple of a crime but can­not find any ev­i­dence to sup­port your lies about the crime be­ing com­mit­ted,” he said, adding that the on­ly peo­ple who would have a prob­lem with crime re­duc­tion and pos­i­tives re­gard­ing the TTPS “would be those fear­ful I was get­ting too close to link­ing them to the ma­jor crim­i­nal big fish in T&T”.

He warned that those who “blind­ly sup­port Kei­th Row­ley’s stance” are at greater risk of their rel­a­tives be­ing killed, raped, or kid­napped.

Grif­fith: No prob­lem

with Kam­la

Grif­fith al­so said there are no is­sues be­tween his par­ty and the UNC and didn’t be­lieve any of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments on Mon­day were di­rect­ed at the NTA.

“I’ve nev­er tried to jump through her win­dow and at no time did I try to con­tact her and she re­fused to take my calls, so the com­ments she made were di­rect­ed prob­a­bly at an­oth­er par­ty,” he said.

“As I said, over the last few months we’ve com­mu­ni­cat­ed on one oc­ca­sion, that there’s no an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween both par­ties and both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers. I’m aware that the UNC’s hi­er­ar­chy would be very busy now, to­tal­ly fo­cused on deal­ing with UNC’s June 15 in­ter­nal elec­tion, fol­lowed by the two by-elec­tions on June 17, so I’m con­fi­dent that on June 18 we’ll as­cer­tain what is the tra­jec­to­ry for both par­ties.”

Grif­fith said he isn’t get­ting in­volved in the UNC’s in­ter­nal pol­i­tics.

“I’d be to­tal­ly out of place. All I’d state is that if some­thing is work­ing, you don’t need to fix it. It’s hoped that who­ev­er’s se­lect­ed in the Na­tex would al­ways un­der­stand the dy­nam­ics of T&T’s pol­i­tics and we’d have learned from the his­to­ry look­ing at the mis­takes of the past and the suc­cess­es to know ex­act­ly how we in­tend to op­er­ate in the fu­ture.”