An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

ann-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith says the is­sue of cam­paign fi­nanc­ing must be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed ahead of any fur­ther elec­tion in T&T.

Call­ing for a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work to be put in place, he said there was cur­rent­ly no ac­count­abil­i­ty in terms of the “ob­scene” amount of mon­ey be­ing spent to fi­nance and pro­mote elec­tions in this coun­try.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar, Ari­ma, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon–fol­low­ing a day-long mo­tor­cade which be­gan in Diego Mar­tin–it was a sun­burnt Grif­fith who ad­mit­ted the is­sue had arisen dur­ing the cur­rent elec­tion prepa­ra­tion.

He claimed, “Cam­paign fi­nanc­ing was stink. When you have po­lit­i­cal par­ties get­ting $150 mil­lion, one of them spend­ing, and if you think I lie, you just have to add the ad­ver­tise­ments from CNC3 and TV6 on a night­ly ba­sis." He said mil­lions of dol­lars were be­ing spent.

With 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing to­mor­row’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Grif­fith added, “Four­teen of us did not have that lux­u­ry be­cause the oth­er two ma­jor par­ties ... when you give a con­trac­tor a $100 mil­lion con­tract that re­al­ly costs $20 mil­lion, they take $40 mil­lion out, half of that, and give it back to the par­ty who gave them the con­tract and say thank you very much for the con­tract but al­so re­mem­ber me if you get in­to gov­ern­ment.”

Grif­fith in­di­cat­ed that pro­vid­ing peo­ple with cash, house­hold ap­pli­ances, and oth­er in­duce­ments had put small­er par­ties at a dis­ad­van­tage.

He said, “It was re­al­ly filthy the way mon­ey was just be­ing spent. That’s tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey be­ing spent in­di­rect­ly.

“It’s not fair to the oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties. It is what is go­ing to keep that PNM or UNC-till-you-die sup­port, but we worked with what we had, and I do hope we can find some­thing to con­trol cam­paign fi­nanc­ing.”

He de­scribed the process as “very un­tidy”.

“It is un­eth­i­cal. Whether it is il­le­gal or not re­mains to be seen. That can on­ly be seen if we do some leg­is­la­tion to put an end to this.”

In­di­cat­ing the NTA had man­aged to at­tract a con­voy of more than 60 ve­hi­cles, Grif­fith com­mend­ed act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin for phys­i­cal­ly vis­it­ing the ral­ly lo­ca­tions of the ma­jor par­ties.

He said, “That is very rare to see. We did not see that for the past three years.”

Grif­fith said this new wave of polic­ing was the type of lead­er­ship the law en­force­ment com­mu­ni­ty need­ed and that “the sup­port we have seen from the pro­tec­tive ser­vices has been sec­ond to none”.

In­di­cat­ing they had en­coun­tered sup­port­ers of both the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) dur­ing yes­ter­day’s mo­tor­cade and no one had at­tacked or ha­rassed the NTA, Grif­fith re­mind­ed the pub­lic that there was life af­ter April 28.

Look­ing ahead, he said, “On April 29, it is still go­ing to be one coun­try, one peo­ple, and there is go­ing to be one gov­ern­ment and one prime min­is­ter and prob­a­bly one op­po­si­tion.”

On talks that the NTA was there to join with the UNC or the PNM, he said, “We are sim­ply here to give peo­ple an­oth­er choice, an­oth­er op­tion.”

Grif­fith claimed the NTA had done their job in this re­gard and had man­aged to es­tab­lish it­self as a bona fide po­lit­i­cal par­ty.