Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith has de­fend­ed the im­par­tial­i­ty of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), amid claims by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of po­lit­i­cal bias.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark said the par­ty had no con­fi­dence in the EBC and warned that any at­tempt to frus­trate the elec­torate’s will would lead to pub­lic back­lash.

The UNC has open­ly ac­cused the EBC of bias. 

Dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Wednes­day in St Joseph, Grif­fith voiced his sup­port for the in­sti­tu­tion and recog­nised the im­por­tance of ad­her­ing to its es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

He fur­ther con­demned po­lit­i­cal par­ties for at­tempt­ing to bring the EBC in­to dis­re­pute.

“The coun­try needs to calm down. I mean the au­dac­i­ty of try­ing to ac­cuse the EBC of be­ing in­volved with an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty. It is go­ing to be that kind of elec­tion where they go­ing to do a Mil­li Vanil­li, they go­ing to try to blame it on the rain and what we have seen is the EBC has been very pro­fes­sion­al, they have done their work,” he said. 

The EBC has since strong­ly re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that it is col­lud­ing with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to rig the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Grif­fith not­ed that while there have been in­stances where the EBC has made er­rors, his par­ty was not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned.

“We are very com­fort­able that this time the EBC is do­ing all that it can to en­sure that this is a free and fair elec­tion.”

Mean­while, Grif­fith ex­plained that the NTA’s cal­cu­lat­ed ap­proach to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion should not be mis­rep­re­sent­ed as a sab­o­tage at­tempt.

“You hear­ing every­thing like we are vote split­ters, we are not vote split­ters. We have a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of those in­di­vid­u­als who are not PNM or UNC till they die. Per­sons be­lieve we must just join with the UNC to beat the PNM. We are not about that, we are about good gov­er­nance, not just re­mov­ing the gov­ern­ment.”

Grif­fith en­cour­aged the elec­torate to se­lect their next leader wise­ly and be wary of false promis­es and cos­met­ic al­liances. 

“Un­like oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties, we in­tend to unite this coun­try, politi­cians have di­vid­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go for far too long. We in­tend to find ways to unite the na­tion.”

The NTA is among 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing Mon­day’s polls and is field­ing a to­tal of 17 can­di­dates.

Be­fore the near­ly two-hour-long po­lit­i­cal meet­ing came to an end, Grif­fith turned the at­ten­tion over to his wife Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith. Dy­er-Grif­fith pub­licly shared her re­cent bat­tle with breast can­cer. Last month, the for­mer sen­a­tor al­so had surgery to re­move a brain tu­mour.

Dy­er-Grif­fith en­cour­aged par­ty sup­port­ers and the wider pop­u­la­tion to not al­low the Gen­er­al Elec­tion to erode their hu­man­i­ty and con­sid­er­a­tion for each oth­er de­spite their po­lit­i­cal al­liance. She said the out­pour­ing of love and sup­port she re­ceived dur­ing her med­ical treat­ment was a tes­ta­ment to the kind­ness of cit­i­zens.

“Some­times we for­get how won­der­ful we are as a peo­ple and who we re­al­ly are. Some­times we re­mem­ber it when it is Car­ni­val or Bor­ough day in Point Fortin or some­thing else when we come to­geth­er and it is a lime and a dra­ma. But in times like this, like what we are man­ag­ing now, where you get per­sons who may not know you from paint on the wall and they hug­ging you and kiss­ing you and pray­ing for you and want the best for you, that is when we re­mem­ber who we are,” she said.