Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she has no time for dra­ma and is fo­cus­ing on is­sues af­fect­ing cit­i­zens and prepar­ing for the gen­er­al elec­tion.

And Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith says he has no in­ten­tion of be­ing in any cat­fight or is­su­ing ul­ti­ma­tums such as is be­ing is­sued to UNC by oth­er par­ties.

How­ev­er, as far as some se­nior UNC mem­bers are con­cerned, a coali­tion with Grif­fith’s NTA is back on and the pre­ferred arrange­ment to fight the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

This, from the two par­ties af­ter Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty leader Phillip Alexan­der’s re­cent state­ments on the UNC and NTA.

Af­ter Grif­fith took is­sue with Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent warn­ings to small­er par­ties to pull their weight and he (Grif­fith) al­lud­ed to is­sues with UNC deputy leader Jear­lean John, Alexan­der sup­port­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment and said PEP would en­dorse the UNC for gen­er­al elec­tion.

But on Wednes­day, as Grif­fith ap­peared to re­con­nect with the UNC, Alexan­der said he’d can­cel all me­dia ap­pear­ances, pub­lic state­ments and pub­lic meet­ings un­til UNC lead­er­ship de­cides if Grif­fith or any­one he’s in­volved with are again part of any ac­com­mo­da­tion with the UNC.

Grif­fith on Wednes­day had said there was on­go­ing di­a­logue with Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the “teething is­sues” with UNC were ex­pect­ed and these were to en­sure mu­tu­al re­spect.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who on Mon­day thanked par­ties for en­dors­ing her, on­ly said briefly to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “The UNC is fo­cused on the is­sues af­fect­ing our cit­i­zens and prepar­ing for the gen­er­al elec­tion.”

She didn’t re­ply to spe­cif­ic texted queries, in­clud­ing how the is­sue re­gard­ing NTA and PEP might be re­solved, if the NTA arrange­ment was of­fi­cial­ly on, if Grif­fith’s is­sue with John was re­solved, and if she’d bring all par­ties to­geth­er.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, com­ment­ing on NTA’s re­la­tions with UNC, said, “There was on­ly one me­dia re­port that stat­ed that there was ‘no longer any uni­ty’. But at no time did ei­ther the UNC or NTA state that.

“As I said, there would be slight teething prob­lems and they’ll be rec­ti­fied to en­sure no re­peat of is­sues as in 2010-15. Like the UNC’s re­main­ing fo­cused, we in NTA re­main fo­cused on is­sues that af­fect T&T and show­ing the pub­lic we have the so­lu­tion re­quired to fix T&T.”

Grif­fith added, “We have no in­ten­tion of be­ing in any cat­fight or gut­ter pol­i­tics with any oth­er par­ty, or is­su­ing ul­ti­ma­tums or threats—like what’s be­ing is­sued to UNC—and out­right at­tacks on oth­er par­ties. NTA wants no part of that.”

He said he found it amaz­ing that any po­lit­i­cal par­ty would give an ul­ti­ma­tum and a threat to an­oth­er par­ty that got over 300,000 votes in the last gen­er­al elec­tion and has 19 seats.

“...And you’re threat­en­ing them and giv­ing them ul­ti­ma­tums. If ul­ti­ma­tums and threats to walk away start now, what do you ex­pect when we get in gov­ern­ment? That isn’t what we want. If we have is­sues, we deal with it, we thrash it out and we move on.”

Grif­fith added, “I’ll con­tin­ue meet­ing par­ties—in­clud­ing top mem­bers of cer­tain par­ties with­in the next week—to en­sure they’re on the same page to prop­er gov­ern­ment and not have peo­ple act­ing sim­i­lar to the same gov­ern­ment we’re try­ing to re­move. If an­oth­er par­ty wants to come on board, they can’t come as a Tro­jan Horse, at­tack­ing cer­tain par­ties and not oth­ers. Even Ste­vie Won­der will see it for what it is. The on­ly peo­ple who’ll wel­come bac­cha­nal in this type of al­liance will be those who sup­port PNM, and right­ly so.”

Yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said, “When we en­tered in­to this arrange­ment and made this de­c­la­ra­tion of sup­port, not on­ly was Grif­fith not in the pic­ture, he was at­tack­ing the UNC and Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar.”

Say­ing that’s why he gave his sup­port to Per­sad-Bisses­sar to stand up to Grif­fith, he added, “It was suc­cess­ful, it pan­icked him, boiled him down like bha­ji—sent him beg­ging back. ... This isn’t the first time he’s ‘det­o­nat­ed’, he did so when he was Kam­la’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter...”

Claim­ing Grif­fith was very much re­spon­si­ble for the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment’s demise, Alexan­der claimed that when Grif­fith was po­lice com­mis­sion­er, he ac­cused the UNC of be­ing an ob­struc­tion to prop­er law en­force­ment and oth­er ac­cu­sa­tions.

“These things can­not be ig­nored,” he added.

Alexan­der said Grif­fith “det­o­nat­ed “again re­cent­ly, in­clud­ing on a re­cent show and in com­ments in the me­dia.

“The on­ly thing that changed it and stopped him car­ry­ing on is my an­nounce­ment. That’s not ‘teething pains’, that’s a beg back. If the UNC’s so fool­ish as to take him back, I’ll re­serve the right to a fu­ture de­ci­sion on what we do next and to who or what or how we go for­ward,” Alexan­der added.

Op­po­si­tion front­lin­ers trash Phillip’s com­ments

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, some in the UNC con­firmed NTA leader Gary Grif­fith was ob­vi­ous­ly “back in the ac­com­mo­da­tion” fold.

On the over­all sit­u­a­tion, a top lead­er­ship of­fi­cial, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said, “We’re hap­py so many are trip­ping over them­selves to join the UNC, but the par­ty can­not ac­cept ul­ti­ma­tums. I imag­ine oth­er groups will al­so come run­ning to em­brace the UNC and if we all have to work to­geth­er to re­move the PNM legal­ly, that ef­fort has no place for ul­ti­ma­tums.”

The of­fi­cial added, “The NTA was UNC’s part­ner from the start in an al­liance which suc­cess­ful­ly fought the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls. So Mr (Phillip) Alexan­der must un­der­stand about join­ing teams, that one doesn’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­come coach, man­ag­er and every­thing.”

Some oth­er se­nior mem­bers al­so trashed Alexan­der’s com­ment, say­ing the UNC was a par­ty with 19 seats, 300,000 mem­bers and it couldn’t be giv­en ul­ti­ma­tums by per­sons whose par­ty had lost all de­posits in the last elec­tion, “re­signed so many times from its lead­er­ship and that par­ty now has its own in­ter­nal is­sues which ent fin­ish”.