Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of HOPE, Karen Nunez-Tesheira, is not rul­ing out a part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tions.

HOPE  has joined with the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) to es­tab­lish the Pro­gres­sive Al­liance. How­ev­er, UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tains that her par­ty will not en­ter in­to any ac­com­mo­da­tions with the NTA which is head­ed by Gary Grif­fith.

Nunez-Tesheira said while fur­ther dis­cus­sions among the par­ty ex­ec­u­tives are need­ed to de­ter­mine the way for­ward, she did not want to burn any bridges with the main op­po­si­tion par­ty.

“Things are said for var­i­ous rea­sons and I’m not doubt­ing the sin­cer­i­ty of the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC and what she said but a day in pol­i­tics is a life­time and I think we all and the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC, like the al­liance, has the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go fore­most and there­fore I can’t speak for her.

“She has been strong in her state­ment but we will wait and see how that de­vel­ops be­cause I don’t think I’m wrong to say that at one point in time Phillip Alexan­der, whom I have no ar­gu­ment with, was very out­spo­ken in his crit­i­cisms of the UNC and yet you get the im­pres­sion that there is no dif­fi­cul­ty with him to­day so I’m not go­ing to close that door,” she said.

Nunez-Teshiera, not­ing that the amal­ga­ma­tion of po­lit­i­cal par­ties is an ef­fort to bol­ster chances of re­mov­ing the PNM from of­fice, added, “I will say that we have com­mon ground. We are work­ing to so­lid­i­fy that po­si­tion and hope that the strength of the al­liance of these par­ties will have sup­port from the elec­torate.”

Grif­fith ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion on an al­liance with the NTA but said his par­ty would not be used as a po­lit­i­cal pawn.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about se­cret meet­ings to of­fer a safe seat to an­oth­er par­ty’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in ex­change for a man­u­fac­tured coali­tion. He con­tend­ed that he would not al­low NTA sup­port­ers to be ex­ploit­ed. 

He al­so dis­put­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that she had re­quest­ed NTA da­ta.

“Her pur­suit of this da­ta is hyp­o­crit­i­cal as well, con­sid­er­ing her al­liance with Philip Alexan­der whose par­ty has ef­fec­tive­ly dis­solved, and we chal­lenge any­one to name one oth­er per­son be­sides Phillip in the par­ty.

“In ad­di­tion, the NTA does not need to prove its wor­thi­ness to the UNC. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pre­vi­ous ea­ger­ness for NTA sup­port dur­ing the lo­cal elec­tions ex­pos­es this hypocrisy even fur­ther, es­pe­cial­ly in key con­stituen­cies like San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do,” Grif­fith said.

The NTA leader al­so fired back at Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that par­ties had failed to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed to es­tab­lish an al­liance.

“Many with­in the UNC pri­vate­ly agree that al­liances are nec­es­sary but fear Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ret­ri­bu­tion. The NTA holds her sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for the lack of a uni­fied op­po­si­tion. Her tac­tics and false claims pre­vent gen­uine col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The NTA urges the coun­try to recog­nise this and un­der­stand that con­tin­u­ing this path, es­pe­cial­ly with Alexan­der’s dis­taste­ful in­put, guar­an­tees elec­toral de­feat,” he said.