Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day wrote to UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, seek­ing to “rec­ti­fy” what he de­scribed as Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “con­stant re­fusal” to con­tin­ue com­mu­ni­cat­ing with him. He al­so called out what he said was Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “ap­par­ent ob­ses­sion” with de­fend­ing UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Jear­lean John from crit­i­cism, and added his par­ty would not be part of any “po­lit­i­cal do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.”

“You can­not and will not de­mand what I can and can­not say,” Grif­fith stat­ed.

“You do not get to de­ter­mine what I can­not say about Jear­lean John. Even worse, you don’t get to bring it in­to UNC in­ter­nal is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly when there was nev­er any re­cent state­ment by me about Ms John.”

Grif­fith sent the let­ter, which he said was to “rec­ti­fy” the two on­go­ing is­sues, af­ter Mon­day’s Star Team meet­ing where Per­sad-Bisses­sar warned him to “leave Jear­lean John alone!”

A video is­sued by the NTA sub­se­quent­ly al­leged it was a “lie” that John was a min­is­ter in the then-Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion in 1995.

At Wednes­day’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots meet­ing where can­di­date for chair­man Lar­ry Lal­la men­tioned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ing to Grif­fith, Lal­la called for Grif­fith, the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and HOPE to come on board with the Rush­ton Paray-led slate.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia that he is open to work­ing with who­ev­er forms the UNC’s na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive to­mor­row or any suc­cess­ful slate com­bi­na­tion. He said he didn’t know if the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate would even­tu­al­ly form a par­ty, adding if Per­sad-Bisses­sar backed Star slate wins the ma­jor­i­ty, he hoped the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive would have the strength to over­ride John’s in­flu­ence on Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

In his let­ter, ti­tled Why does Jear­lean John con­tin­ue to cause bad blood be­tween the UNC and oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties, Grif­fith claimed there has been a con­trast­ing ap­proach to com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him from the sit­u­a­tion with their Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion arrange­ment.

Say­ing their al­liance ac­quired 60,000 more votes than the PNM, Grif­fith said the NTA con­test­ed 31 of the most dif­fi­cult dis­tricts—safe ar­eas for the PNM—and many NTA sup­port­ers vot­ed for UNC where the NTA wasn’t con­test­ing. He said he walked with many UNC can­di­dates al­most dai­ly, as re­quest­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, par­tic­u­lar­ly in San Fer­nan­do and San­gre Grande and be­lieved the NTA’s in­flu­ence played a ma­jor role in mak­ing in­roads in those ar­eas.

“It’s for this rea­son we find it strange that over the last few months, your com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the NTA has all but ceased. NTA isn’t beg­ging for a home; we’re quite pre­pared to go it alone and give cit­i­zens a third op­tion.

“We’ll there­fore ap­pre­ci­ate if you would be so kind as to ad­vise us if you in­tend to pur­sue any fu­ture re­la­tion­ship with us, or whether you in­tend to do ex­act­ly what was done in the last two gen­er­al elec­tions—go it alone,” Grif­fith ques­tioned.

‘NTA won’t be part of
po­lit­i­cal do­mes­tic vi­o­lence’

Grif­fith said the on­ly time Per­sad-Bisses­sar men­tioned him/NTA was on plat­forms where she “launched scathing at­tacks on float­ing vot­ers, ques­tion­ing our worth and ca­pa­bil­i­ty, which is alarm­ing since you were thank­ing NTA a few months ago for its in­put in the LGE.”

Say­ing NTA was nei­ther the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots nor the PNM, he said, “Why are we part of your cam­paign? What’s the ra­tio­nale in pick­ing a fight with us? ... Go­ing on plat­form, days be­fore UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tion and two by-elec­tions, to threat­en me as a fel­low po­lit­i­cal leader, who was at your side a few months ago.”

Grif­fith said like Napoleon at the Bat­tle of Wa­ter­loo, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had a sim­i­lar lieu­tenant who was wrong­ly ad­vis­ing her “to pick a fight with every­one, that would un­doubt­ed­ly lead to your third con­sec­u­tive Wa­ter­loo if you ad­here to her ad­vice.”

“Why does Jear­lean John ap­par­ent­ly have so much in­flu­ence over you and the UNC? How does she get to de­cide whether or not you have a di­a­logue with oth­er par­ties? When did you be­come like the PNM and de­cide to win alone or lose alone? Are you yet again plan­ning to lose alone a third time?

“What is it with Jear­lean John that you would be so bold to open­ly at­tack an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal leader in pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly one that you pre­vi­ous­ly had an al­liance with when you have some­thing known as a mo­bile phone, where­by you could sim­ply con­tact me if you have any con­cern?” he ques­tioned.

Grif­fith said based on what’s now be­com­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pat­tern, “You’ll in­deed say you in­tend to, and will be will­ing to work with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties. T&T can be as­sured it would be fol­lowed by threats of these par­ties ‘know­ing their place,’ call­ing them ‘small­er par­ties, and that you wouldn’t ‘tol­er­ate be­ing dis­re­spect­ed’. It’s sim­i­lar to a man invit­ing a woman to live with him but telling her that if she doesn’t ad­here to his every or­der, he’ll throw her out. NTA has no in­ten­tion be­ing a part of any po­lit­i­cal do­mes­tic vi­o­lence by the UNC or any oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty.”