Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), now in an al­liance with the HOPE par­ty, isn’t fo­cus­ing on links with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance or oth­er par­ties - and the HOPE has con­firmed the same.

COP leader Kirt Sin­nette made this clear yes­ter­day, while HOPE deputy leader Louis Lee Sing and par­ty chair­man Steve Al­varez al­so sig­nalled the same.

This, af­ter a re­cent an­nounce­ment of the 27-year-old COP’s al­liance with HOPE, which was launched last year. HOPE, head­ed by Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, com­pris­es peo­ple for­mer­ly from the COP (like Hamel-Smith), the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and oth­er par­ties.

In a re­cent state­ment on the COP/HOPE al­liance, both par­ties said they’re com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing in­clu­sive di­a­logue and en­cour­ag­ing like-mind­ed en­ti­ties and peo­ple to join their al­liance and con­tribute to­wards for­mu­lat­ing a sus­tain­able na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan for T&T.

The al­liance was de­scribed as a uni­fied com­mit­ment to T&T’s de­vel­op­ment and “sig­nif­i­cant step to­wards fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape of T&T and is re­spon­sive to the as­pi­ra­tions and con­cerns of all peo­ple”.

The state­ment said recog­nis­ing the im­per­a­tive to ad­dress the di­verse needs of cit­i­zens, both par­ties have “strate­gi­cal­ly aligned to work on a trans­for­ma­tive ini­tia­tive geared to­wards a com­pre­hen­si­ble sus­tain­able na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan.” The ini­tia­tive is said to “tran­scend bound­aries, pri­ori­tis­ing T&T’s greater good, pro­mot­ing a spir­it of co-op­er­a­tion that ris­es above par­ti­san in­ter­ests.”

Sin­nette said COP has net­worked for over three years to bring to­geth­er in­di­vid­u­als of like-mind on T&T’s in­ter­est. “That’s our fo­cus, not nec­es­sar­i­ly on link­ing with oth­er par­ties,” Sin­nette said.

He said he called Hamel-Smith, a for­mer COP front­lin­er, and both par­ties’ ex­ec­u­tives had talks for eight months and reached a con­sen­sus, as both hold sim­i­lar ideals.

On whether there would be talks with the UNC pos­si­bly, Sin­nette said, “We’re tak­ing our time go­ing for­ward. I can’t say any­thing un­til any­thing is dis­cussed by our ex­ec­u­tive, and we take our po­si­tion to our HOPE part­ner on who we’ll ‘side’ with.”

He added, “We’re open to dis­cus­sions with every par­ty that’s fo­cused on bet­ter­ing T&T. COP has cer­tain prin­ci­ples. We’ll not have ne­go­ti­a­tions as we did in 2010 (with the UNC-PP). We’ve learned our les­son from that 2010 ne­go­ti­a­tion. Go­ing in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with any oth­er par­ty would be dif­fer­ent.”

How­ev­er, Sin­nette steered clear of com­ment­ing on UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ings on Mon­day to small par­ties.

On pos­si­ble talks with NTA’s Gary Grif­fith, with whom COP spoke be­fore, Sin­nette said, “He didn’t take up the of­fer and went with the UNC. If he ap­proach­es us again, we’ll have talks with Gary but we must have open terms and need to sign off on these things.”

On whether COP would speak to the PNM, of­ten seen as an op­po­nent, Sin­nette added, “We don’t have any op­po­nents in this. We’re go­ing with who has T&T’s best in­ter­est at heart and we’d work with any par­ty and like-mind­ed in­di­vid­u­als that hold T&T’s best in­ter­est. We’ve spo­ken to NGOs, sug­ar work­ers and oth­er groups,”

Hamel-Smith didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day but deputy leader (gov­er­nance) Lee Sing, when asked about link­ing with UNC pos­si­bly, said, “We’re not look­ing to have any pre-arranged mar­riage. The coun­try has to grow up, ac­cept its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and good peo­ple have to come for­ward and of­fer them­selves for ser­vice.”

Lee Sing said HOPE is talk­ing to farm­ers, as­so­ci­a­tions, unions and NGOs as they bring ma­te­r­i­al.

HOPE chair­man Steve Al­varez added, “HOPE is fo­cused on build­ing hope. Our arrange­ment with the COP is for a na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan - we have to find so­lu­tions first.”

On links with oth­er par­ties, Al­varez said, “Our aim is to en­sure HOPE and COP agree on ideas first, so we’ll not be join­ing oth­er par­ties sim­ply to get a po­si­tion in gov­ern­ment. We’ll join who­ev­er shares our vi­sion for T&T. We’re get­ting our (al­liance) bear­ings and the na­tion­al plan for T&T first.”

“Can’t fault Kam­la’s warn­ings” - Lee Sing

Com­ment­ing on UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ings on Mon­day to small­er par­ties, HOPE deputy leader Louis Lee Sing said, “I can­not fault Kam­la’s com­ments, which are no doubt dri­ven by the words and deeds of her jilt­ed part­ner of re­cent vin­tage - Gary Grif­fith, who, in my view, speaks loud­ly and al­ways says the same thing.”

Lee Sing said he felt Grif­fith was “part of the prob­lem, not the so­lu­tion.”

He sug­gest­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments made it clear she in­tends to en­sure a two-par­ty sys­tem.

“But I be­lieve Kam­la was al­so speak­ing to those UNC mem­bers who con­tin­ue speak­ing against her lead­er­ship and who’d like to see her re­moved as leader but are mor­tal­ly afraid to chal­lenge her - lest they be ban­ished from Kam­la’s Queen­dom,” Lee Sing added.

Lee Sing added, "Make no bones about it - Ms Bisses­sar is in charge of the UNC and she knows it as much as her ri­vals do. Her words have thrown out an in­vi­ta­tion to all small par­ties to join her in re­mov­ing the PNM, with­out say­ing what is in it for any brave enough to ac­cept her in­vi­ta­tion.”

Lee Singh, how­ev­er, said the fu­ture of small par­ties rests in a plat­form of uni­ty.

“... Kam­la, like a bear, has fi­nal­ly tired from her long hi­ber­na­tion and giv­en the re­spons­es she’s get­ting from her crime fo­rums, is now em­bold­ened to the point that she be­lieves she has a mul­ti-eth­nic par­ty ready to take on all com­ers! Fi­nal­ly, she be­lieves Gary Grif­fith is darn fast to med­dle in her busi­ness - and right­ful­ly so.”