Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

As the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate in T&T in­ten­si­fies ahead of the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith says his par­ty will present its can­di­dates with­in a week.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that his par­ty held a meet­ing to dis­cuss the par­ty’s strat­e­gy and plans for the up­com­ing elec­tion and with the po­lit­i­cal land­scape shift­ing, the fo­cus was on how the NTA in­tends to po­si­tion it­self as a se­ri­ous con­tender in the race.

The par­ty held a walk­a­bout in Aranguez yes­ter­day. The NTA would not be field­ing a full slate of 41 can­di­dates but in­stead, they plan to fo­cus on around 15 to 16 strate­gi­cal­ly se­lect­ed con­stituen­cies. “We have al­ready com­plet­ed our num­bers. So prob­a­bly in about a week or so, we will give the an­nounce­ment and present all of the can­di­dates,” Grif­fith not­ed.

“While it won’t be 41, we have care­ful­ly se­lect­ed seats that are strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant to our vi­sion and ap­proach.”

He stressed the im­por­tance of these strate­gic seat se­lec­tions, em­pha­sis­ing that vot­ers should not dis­miss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of third-par­ty can­di­dates se­cur­ing seats. The NTA leader high­light­ed the past suc­cess­es of Jack Warn­er’s ground­break­ing win with the In­de­pen­dent Labour Par­ty in Ch­agua­nas, where Warn­er de­feat­ed the UNC in their strongest seat.

“Do not be fooled to be­lieve that a third par­ty can­not win a seat. Jack Warn­er proved that with the ILP in Ch­agua­nas. He de­feat­ed the UNC in their safest seat. This was equiv­a­lent to the PNM los­ing Laven­tille,” Grif­fith point­ed out, re­in­forc­ing the idea that the po­lit­i­cal land­scape has dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed. He not­ed that an era of blind al­le­giance to the tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal par­ties, PNM and UNC, is over. “The coun­try is past the stage of just blind­ly vot­ing a PNM or UNC till they die. I have the world of re­spect for both po­lit­i­cal par­ties and both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, but the times have changed.”

Grif­fith said as NTA pre­pares to make its of­fi­cial can­di­date an­nounce­ments, the fo­cus is clear: to of­fer the peo­ple of T&T a fresh, strate­gic al­ter­na­tive in the up­com­ing elec­tion.