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Thursday, June 5, 2025

Griffith: NTA not here to work for any party

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR-ALONZO
333 days ago
20240707

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) does not want to split votes to help the PNM win the next gen­er­al elec­tion and will not be used to help oth­er par­ties be­come the “sole gov­ern­ment,” po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.

“We are not here to work for any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, left or right,” he said at a press con­fer­ence at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in St Joseph.

Grif­fith said while the NTA will be work­ing with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties in join­ing forces, they must have a strat­e­gy to pre­vent a col­lapse.

“Po­lit­i­cal par­ties will usu­al­ly de­liv­er a Christ­mas shop­ping list just be­fore the elec­tion of more po­lice sta­tions, more hos­pi­tals, bet­ter roads.

“There is no strat­e­gy, no cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and be­cause of that you will see the par­ty that gets in gov­ern­ment col­laps­ing be­cause they spend so much time try­ing to get in­to gov­ern­ment, there has nev­er been any prepa­ra­tion when you get in­to gov­ern­ment,” he said, adding that this re­sults in peo­ple be­ing ap­point­ed min­is­ters who can­not per­form ef­fec­tive­ly be­cause they are “square pegs in round holes.”

“We have a per­son who is the chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, he boasts about it but his train­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tion is to mas­sage rocks and stones,” Grif­fith said.

He em­pha­sised there must be a way for po­lit­i­cal par­ties to join, oth­er than to de­feat the PNM and said an in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ty, the Strat­e­gy In­sti­tute of T&T, can help.

“This body com­pris­es 25-odd of the best minds. They are not po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned and what they have done is form a road map to­wards good gov­er­nance and that is what we need,” he said.

The NTA is ex­pect­ed to set up an of­fice in San Fer­nan­do West in the next few weeks, Grif­fith an­nounced.


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