The HOPE par­ty has writ­ten small­er par­ties, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, seek­ing dis­cus­sions to es­tab­lish a coali­tion arrange­ment in T&T’s in­ter­est.

HOPE’s deputy leader Louis Lee Sing con­firmed let­ters were sent to en­ti­ties last week, and added, “We’re meet­ing to dis­cuss how we can work to­geth­er to ad­dress the many chal­lenges that con­front us, plus the re­al­i­ty is that all the dy­nam­ics cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in the UNC or the PNM sug­gest that there must be an­oth­er way of find­ing so­lu­tions to chal­lenges con­fronting T&T.

“Peo­ple are recog­nis­ing that they can’t go it alone; there­fore, dis­cus­sions are to ad­dress the un­cer­tain­ties now and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of to­mor­row.”

NTA leader Gary Grif­fith has al­ready wel­comed the ini­tia­tive. He said, “I have hope this will all work.”

HOPE, which was launched in 2023, in­volves for­mer mem­bers of the COP, UNC, and PNM and is led by Tim­o­thy Hamel Smith. For­mer PNM min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira is the deputy leader. The chair­man is Steve Al­varez.

Lee Sing said let­ters were sent to four or five en­ti­ties, “not nec­es­sar­i­ly on­ly par­ties.”

“We’re mo­bil­is­ing peo­ple who may con­sti­tute the po­lit­i­cal force, in­clud­ing non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions; NGOs rep­re­sent the fu­ture. We’re al­so talk­ing to trade unions—every­body, but it takes much time.

“Like all things po­lit­i­cal, you be­gin with the end in mind, and the end in mind is to put to­geth­er a coali­tion with the peo­ple and T&T’s in­ter­ests at heart.”

Lee Sing did not specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy all of HOPE’s tar­gets ex­cept for writ­ing Grif­fith’s NTA and the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. He said Mick­ela Pan­day’s Pa­tri­ot­ic Front was on HOPE’s agen­da. For­mer UNC min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath was not con­tact­ed. Bharath con­firmed re­cent­ly that he was con­sid­er­ing launch­ing his own par­ty.

On whether the UNC would be con­tact­ed, Lee Sing added, “At this time and giv­en the na­ture and dy­nam­ics of the sit­u­a­tion, we need to do one thing at a time and are ad­dress­ing an al­liance among the small­er par­ties first.”

Lee Sing said there was a “good meet­ing last Sat­ur­day with var­i­ous groups. Very open, peo­ple were op­ti­mistic. Dis­cus­sions will con­tin­ue; a sec­ond meet­ing’s up­com­ing.”

Grif­fith: Coali­tion can’t be based on just beat­ing the PNM 

Grif­fith said his par­ty’s name sig­ni­fied the im­por­tance of hav­ing dif­fer­ent par­ties com­ing to­geth­er, “but not based on just try­ing to beat the PNM or en­ter gov­ern­ment alone. It must be based on prin­ci­ples en­sur­ing good gov­er­nance.” He said the NAR and PP gov­ern­ments were mar­riages of con­ve­nience to beat the PNM.

“Been there, done that; it wouldn’t work. We need a prop­er tem­plate to ce­ment an al­liance, so when we en­ter gov­ern­ment, that will be the fo­cus of trans­form­ing T&T,” he said.

Grif­fith had no re­sponse from the UNC on an elec­tion arrange­ment with the NTA.

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Pan­day said, “The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front hasn’t re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from HOPE re­gard­ing their ini­tia­tive. We were un­aware they had in­ten­tions of con­test­ing the next gen­er­al elec­tion. That said, our doors are open to any­one who’s will­ing to put coun­try be­fore self.”

COP in­ter­im leader Kirt Sin­nette said, “We’re for HOPE’s ini­tia­tive 100 per cent. We’d signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing to work with HOPE and the Green Par­ty ear­li­er this year.”