Fix­in T&T founder Kirk Wait­he is launch­ing a new par­ty in time for the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion. Wait­he, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, con­firmed that the ac­tivist group has co­a­lesced in­to NOW (it is not an acronym), a po­lit­i­cal par­ty vy­ing to run the coun­try for the next five years.

"I think nei­ther the PNM (Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment) nor the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) must be al­lowed to win the next gen­er­al elec­tion. That would re­dound to the detri­ment of T&T," Wait­he said.

"I think the lev­el of dis­con­tent is un­prece­dent­ed. In 2010 peo­ple were fed up of Patrick Man­ning and they saw Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a ray of light and she came in and proved not to be that ray of light, and then Dr Kei­th Row­ley came in and peo­ple saw him as that ray of light and Kei­th Row­ley has proven and con­tin­ues to prove that he is not that ray of light. And now the coun­try is be­ing of­fered both as a so­lu­tion. The coun­try is be­yond that."

De­spite the suc­ces­sive fail­ures of a third par­ty to break the his­toric two-par­ty bat­tle on elec­tion day, Wait­he feels the elec­torate has ei­ther ma­tured enough or is frus­trat­ed enough to leave the UNC and the PNM be­hind.

"I be­lieve in coali­tion Op­po­si­tion in 2020. To be clear, when I speak about con­tribut­ing to be­ing part of cre­at­ing a coali­tion Op­po­si­tion, I mean hav­ing both the PNM and UNC oc­cu­py the op­po­si­tion bench to­geth­er," he said.

Wait­he though re­fused to con­tem­plate a coali­tion with any of the ex­ist­ing third par­ties, Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) or the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP).

"The COP was a part of the Part­ner­ship, same for MSJ at least in part".

He had "no com­ment" on PEP and its leader Phillip Alexan­der.

With re­gards to the ILP and its founder Jack Warn­er, Wait­he said he would meet with him any day, as long as that meet­ing took place in the US.

Warn­er is cur­rent­ly em­broiled in an ex­tra­di­tion mat­ter over his time at FI­FA. Warn­er re­cent­ly lost his ap­peal over the dis­missal of his law­suit chal­leng­ing the Unit­ed States ex­tra­di­tion re­quest for him.

Warn­er is still chal­leng­ing the pro­ce­dure adopt­ed by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in sign­ing off on the US’s re­quest for his ex­tra­di­tion made back in May 2015.

Warn­er is al­leg­ing that this coun­try’s ex­tra­di­tion treaty with the US con­tra­dicts the Ex­tra­di­tion (Com­mon­wealth and For­eign Ter­ri­to­ries) Act. They were claim­ing that, in pass­ing the act, Par­lia­ment af­ford­ed cit­i­zens cer­tain pro­tec­tions which are ig­nored by the in­ter­na­tion­al treaty.

Wait­he said he was con­fi­dent that NOW was ready to go at it alone.

"The peo­ple of T&T de­serve bet­ter, we're too rich to be so poor," he said.

He said that trib­al pol­i­tics had no place in T&T any­more.

"Whether you from Laven­tille West or Ca­roni East, you can go to a hos­pi­tal in this ex­treme­ly wealthy coun­try and not be guar­an­teed a bed," he said.

"De­spite your race, re­li­gion, pol­i­tics and I be­lieve that when, and I say when, we get the peo­ple of this amaz­ing space to un­der­stand how blessed we are, how rich we were, how rich we still be yet how poor­ly we live. I think trib­al vot­ing can be over­come. I think it is some­thing that is per­pet­u­at­ed by both po­lit­i­cal par­ties. They play to the low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor. Our in­ten­tion is to ap­peal to the best of the Trin­bag­on­ian spir­it."