Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) po­lit­i­cal leader ex­pressed pro­found grat­i­tude to me­dia pro­fes­sion­als, po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, and cur­rent and for­mer prime min­is­ters for their out­pour­ing of sup­port dur­ing his wife, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith's re­cent brain tu­mour surgery.

How­ev­er, he sharply crit­i­cised mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), ac­cus­ing them of show­ing "a lack of class and hu­man­i­ty” in their si­lence.

He ac­knowl­edged mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty from across the po­lit­i­cal di­vide, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment min­is­ters Symon de No­bre­ga, Faris Al-Wari, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Don­na Cox, Pene­lope Beck­les, and Fos­ter Cum­mings.

“Even though we are po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents—and my job is to have them re­moved from of­fice—their con­cern shows class and ma­tu­ri­ty,” he said. “We can op­pose each oth­er with­out be­ing en­e­mies. They con­stant­ly have asked for up­dates. It speaks vol­umes about their char­ac­ter.”

In con­trast, Grif­fith sin­gled out the UNC, led by Ka­mala Prasad-Bisses­sar, for crit­i­cism, not­ing that on­ly one mem­ber, UNC Dave Tan­coo, reached out.

“Not a sin­gle oth­er UNC mem­ber sent a mes­sage. It says a lot about class—or lack of it—and the in­di­vid­u­als in that par­ty,” he re­marked.

Grif­fith joked that the doc­tor suc­cess­ful­ly re­moved the tu­mour. “I asked if they could ex­tract the ‘ar­gu­ing part’ of her brain. They tried, but it’s in a vault—all wives have that!”

He said warm­ly, “But I’ll cher­ish every ar­gu­ment if it means more time with her."

Grif­fith added, “This is a dif­fi­cult time, but the sup­port has been over­whelm­ing." He thanked the pub­lic.