Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she’s open to work­ing with every­one to keep T&T’s cit­i­zens safe.

Her com­ment comes in the wake of a call by for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who wrote to both her and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­peal­ing for all to put aside their po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences and meet him to dis­cuss crime so­lu­tions.

Grif­fith, in a video post on so­cial me­dia last Sun­day, re­vealed that he’d writ­ten both lead­ers, sug­gest­ing every­one set aside pre­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences in or­der to stem the dan­ger­ous tide of crime cur­rent­ly threat­en­ing to over­run the coun­try and to seek di­a­logue and so­lu­tions.

“We can do this...” Grif­fith urged in the video.

“I’m send­ing this mes­sage not as a politi­cian but as a pa­tri­ot of this coun­try...the war is be­ing lost and it is get­ting worse, we are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the high­est crime rate ever.”

He added, “The at­tacks be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and those op­posed to the Gov­ern­ment is (sic) not help­ing re­move the prob­lem and the na­tion can­not wait un­til 2025 to have this na­tion­al cri­sis rec­ti­fied.”

He sug­gest­ed that what is re­quired now is a call for so­lu­tions, not just elab­o­rat­ing on the sit­u­a­tion.

“This can turn around—it is dif­fi­cult but not im­pos­si­ble,” he said.

Grif­fith, who spoke about his abil­i­ties and track record, said this was not a time to be blind­ed by pol­i­tics and the en­e­my was not the po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent but the crim­i­nals.

He rec­om­mend­ed they all meet to dis­cuss im­ple­mentable strate­gies that worked pre­vi­ous­ly and iden­ti­fy ways to pro­vide the sup­port and ex­per­tise re­quired to re­spond to the crime cri­sis.

The T&T Guardian sent queries via What­sApp to PM Row­ley on his thoughts/re­spons­es on the video yes­ter­day, but there was no re­ply.

Sources close to Grif­fith al­so said yes­ter­day that there was no re­sponse from Row­ley.

“But he on­ly got the let­ter last Sun­day,” it was not­ed.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds did not re­ply to What’sApp queries on the video or calls ei­ther.

How­ev­er, UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was emailed on the is­sue, re­spond­ed via brief a state­ment, say­ing, “I have tak­en note of the call by Mr Grif­fith for all stake­hold­ers to work to­geth­er. I my­self have re­peat­ed­ly made over­tures to the Gov­ern­ment for a bi­par­ti­san ap­proach to deal with this un­prece­dent­ed crime scourge.

“In­stead of tak­ing us up on the of­fer, Kei­th Row­ley has in­stead cho­sen to blame, abuse and den­i­grate any­one who dares point out the grim re­al­i­ty of fear cit­i­zens in our na­tion now faces. While I re­main hope­ful, I find it un­like­ly Row­ley is go­ing to change his at­ti­tude. I re­main pre­pared to work with every­one in the in­ter­est of keep­ing all our cit­i­zens safe.”