Room for reconciliation with UNC says Gary

Content Editor

mark.thomas@guardian.co.tt

National Transformation Alliance (NTA) leader Gary Griffith says there is room for reconciliation between his party and the United National Congress (UNC).

Earlier this year, a rift developed between the UNC and the NTA, with leaders of both parties being highly critical of the other.

That rift widened recently when UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar openly criticised Griffith’s tenure as police commissioner and Griffith responded with criticism of Persad-Bissessar’s leadership.

Speaking yesterday as a guest on CNC3’s The Morning Brew Show, however, Griffith said he was willing to extend an olive branch to the UNC.

Still, Griffith asserted that any reconciliation must be based on more than just defeating the People’s National Movement (PNM) in the next general election.

He said T&T needed much more than this.

“It is not going to be based on a marriage of convenience, where we’re just joining up together to defeat the PNM,” Griffith said.

“We’ve been there, and we’ve done that. We saw it in 1986, and we saw it in 2010.

“That bridge constituency of those people calling on the ‘knife and fork persons’, the middle income, those persons who are a PNM or a UNC ‘till they die’ … I have nothing against that. The 200,000 persons on both sides—that is your right, and I respect you for it.”

He added, “What we are working on is to ensure there is a road map towards the transformation of Trinidad and Tobago. Not just joining up to defeat the PNM.”

Griffith said an alliance with the NTA would only strengthen the political efforts of the UNC.

He said, “Almost every single person in the UNC is fully aware that without a strategic alliance, the UNC has never won an election on their own in a three-horse race. Never.”

A breakaway faction of dissatisfied UNC members also recently announced the formation of a new party called Unity Is Power, citing what it called ‘petty politics’ as the reason for its decision to create something new.

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