KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith is un­fazed af­ter be­ing ex­clud­ed from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coali­tion of in­ter­ests. The UNC has formed an al­liance with the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) led by Phillip Alexan­der, Laven­tille Out-Reach for Ver­ti­cal En­rich­ment (LOVE) head­ed by Lennox Smith along with the sup­port of sev­er­al unions. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so made it clear that she will not be team­ing up with Grif­fith, who she ac­cused of dis­re­spect­ing her ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

How­ev­er, an un­both­ered Grif­fith said, “Let us not be fooled in­to be­liev­ing it is be­cause of me dis­re­spect­ing any­one.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) new head­quar­ters in St Clair yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the two could not agree on rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the Aranguez/St Joseph con­stituen­cy and he dis­ap­proves of do­ing busi­ness with crim­i­nals.

Grif­fith said, “Oh I’m so hurt. How can I live with my­self, Kam­la does not want to work with the NTA. It is not the first. It is not sur­pris­ing... I must de­mand that we are not go­ing to ne­go­ti­ate with crim­i­nal el­e­ments. We are not go­ing to give gangs state con­tracts and we are go­ing to en­sure that that bridge con­stituen­cy would be prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ed in to­tal con­trast with what hap­pened in 2010 to 2015. If she doesn’t ad­here to that, she could sing from now till the cows come home about Gary dis­re­spect­ing the ex­ec­u­tive. That is her busi­ness.”

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar does have the sup­port of oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties and groups.

Dur­ing a UNC press brief­ing held on Tues­day evening in Ch­agua­nas, Alexan­der said, “We in the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty are com­mit­ted to the coali­tion of in­ter­est and see­ing it through to its fullest fruition.”

Smith agreed, “We have com­mon in­ter­ests and a com­mon en­e­my. Our com­mon en­e­my clear­ly is the PNM, Dr Row­ley and his par­ty have gen­er­at­ed a lev­el of what I con­sid­er to be a deca­dence in the so­ci­ety across the board and there­fore we felt that we were com­pelled and in­cum­bent up­on us to join this ef­fort.”

Al­so ex­press­ing his al­le­giance, new­ly re-elect­ed Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get praised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for fo­cus­ing on the work­ers’ agen­da.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is in deep cri­sis be­cause the PNM and Dr Kei­th Christo­pher ‘Colum­bus’ Row­ley has placed it in­to deep cri­sis and there­fore we have suf­fered some nine years go­ing in­to ten of un­der­de­vel­oped and if they are al­lowed to get an­oth­er term, we will not recog­nise Trinidad and To­ba­go...Where we are con­cerned in the trade union move­ment, we rep­re­sent the work­ers’ in­ter­est and the work­ers’ in­ter­ests were tram­pled up­on and dis­re­spect­ed un­der this Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment and there­fore there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to put the work­ers’ in­ter­est on the ta­ble and that is ac­com­mo­dat­ed, re­spect­ed and there is a way for­ward on that,” Ro­get said.

Ques­tions about coali­tion

But po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany is ques­tion­ing the groups which have aligned them­selves with the UNC, as well as the par­ty’s de­ci­sion to dis­tance it­self from the NTA.

“All of these per­sons at one time or an­oth­er had very neg­a­tive things to say about Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC, so I don’t think that they were fans of the UNC or her, so it is very in­ter­est­ing that they have all changed her de­meanour. They’ve changed their out­look and now they all want to be as­so­ci­at­ed with her.

“I think what she (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) has done is al­tered the coali­tion method­ol­o­gy to have a coali­tion of per­sons from dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ties who will all con­test un­der a UNC sym­bol that would al­low her to have con­trol in re­spect of the Cross­ing the Floor Act, Sec­tion 49, 2 (e) and Sec­tion 49 (A) of the con­sti­tu­tion,” Ghany said.