Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Gary Grif­fith’s out—start the an­ti-crime talks.

Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed yes­ter­day that Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith had put his in­clu­sion on the Op­po­si­tion’s team for the talks on hold—and she’s now call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to lead the Gov­ern­ment’s team to the dis­cus­sions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Grif­fith did so since he didn’t want to be “scape­goat­ed” as a rea­son for the talks to be scut­tled.

“Hope­ful­ly, Mr Grif­fith’s non-at­ten­dance will as­suage the fears and in­se­cu­ri­ties of the Prime Min­is­ter, who will now re­con­sid­er his re­fusal to at­tend the pro­posed talks,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar added via a me­dia state­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while re­it­er­at­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate in the talks, al­so re­in­forced her call for broad­en­ing the scope and agen­da of dis­cus­sions. Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the de­vel­op­ments af­ter Row­ley re­cent­ly blamed the UNC for the stalled talks.

Since word of the dis­cus­sions arose in Sep­tem­ber, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had made it clear that for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith would be part of the UNC’s team.

The Gov­ern­ment mean­while, had an­nounced a min­is­te­r­i­al team for the talks (Fitzger­ald Hinds, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Ran­dall Mitchell and Stu­art Young) and that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour would con­vene dis­cus­sions.

Af­ter Ar­mour wrote to Per­sad-Bisses­sar in ear­ly No­vem­ber seek­ing her team’s names, she de­clined to re­ply, say­ing she was await­ing re­ply from Row­ley to her Oc­to­ber 14 let­ter seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on sev­er­al is­sues.

Row­ley hasn’t replied but at a me­dia brief­ing last Mon­day, he ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of not be­ing se­ri­ous on the talks and not wish­ing to see any im­prove­ment in the crime sit­u­a­tion, since that was a “po­lit­i­cal bo­nan­za” for them. He said for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­sist Grif­fith be part of the ne­go­ti­a­tions was suf­fi­cient to “tell you all you need­ed to know”. Row­ley said he was in­junct­ed from say­ing much about Grif­fith, but that he knew things oth­ers didn’t.

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Many cit­i­zens have called for the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to work to­geth­er to start bi­par­ti­san an­ti-crime talks. I ab­solute­ly agree with their calls, as this is a time for hu­mil­i­ty and co­op­er­a­tion and not ar­ro­gance ...

“There­fore, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with Mr Grif­fith, he has self­less­ly put his in­clu­sion on the Op­po­si­tion team on hold as he didn’t want to be scape­goat­ed as a rea­son for these talks to be scut­tled.

“Mr Grif­fith has no crim­i­nal charges against him and is ex­cep­tion­al­ly qual­i­fied to con­tribute to these talks. How­ev­er, it’s clear that the pres­ence of Mr Grif­fith caus­es an­guish to the Prime Min­is­ter and is the rea­son for his re­fusal to at­tend.”

She added, “Hope­ful­ly, Mr Grif­fith’s non-at­ten­dance will as­suage the fears and in­se­cu­ri­ties of the Prime Min­is­ter, who will now re­con­sid­er his re­fusal to at­tend the pro­posed crime talks.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed Row­ley false­ly stat­ed the UNC put for­ward a “deal break­er” that there would be no dis­cus­sions if Grif­fith were not present.

Cor­rect­ing what she said was an “un­truth”, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “I had in­di­cat­ed for an in­vi­ta­tion to be ex­tend­ed to all will­ing stake­hold­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the an­ti-crime talks. Over a month ago, on Oc­to­ber 14, 2023, I wrote to the Prime Min­is­ter to clar­i­fy sev­er­al key points con­cern­ing the pro­posed bi­par­ti­san crime talks. To date, there’s been no re­sponse.”

NTA leader still

of­fer­ing UNC ad­vice

Mean­while, Grif­fith yes­ter­day said he’s a pa­tri­ot first who al­ways puts coun­try above every­thing else and this was why af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he en­dorsed her state­ment.

Grif­fith claimed it was clear that Row­ley, “... fu­elled by bit­ter­ness and rage, or maybe sim­ply be­ing in­tim­i­dat­ed to face me, was pre­pared to use my in­clu­sion as an ex­cuse, false­ly de­pict­ing it as a ‘deal break­er’. It’s now hoped that ma­tu­ri­ty takes prece­dence over emo­tion and he not on­ly agrees to terms for the talks, but al­so at­tends and leads his team.”

He said he in­tends to con­tin­ue reg­is­ter­ing dis­ap­point­ment with Row­ley’s “nar­row fo­cus” which sees the talks on­ly as a leg­isla­tive agen­da, since that fails to “prop­er­ly utilise the op­por­tu­ni­ty and makes the talks no more than that of a Par­lia­ment sub-com­mit­tee”.

De­spite this, Grif­fith promised to con­tin­ue of­fer­ing UNC ad­vice and guid­ance, “... be­cause items such as hard tar­get­ing and de­ter­rence with re­gards to the TTPS, as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion, re­struc­tur­ing and the reignit­ing of the sys­tems, tech­nol­o­gy and the 100-plus poli­cies shut down af­ter I was no longer CoP, which were re­spon­si­ble for the high­est re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime in 17 years, must be dis­cussed if re­al re­lief from crime is want­ed.”

“The Prime Min­is­ter’s his­to­ry of on­ly seek­ing ex­cus­es and oth­ers to blame is well es­tab­lished, so my re­cusal stops him from at­tempt­ing to use me as a scape­goat,” Grif­fith said.

He said he hoped cit­i­zens, “see that Row­ley has run out of ex­cus­es and hold him ac­count­able” for their di­min­ished safe­ty and run­away crime.

Kam­la seek­ing ex­pand­ed agen­da

De­spite Grif­fith’s par­tic­i­pa­tion be­ing put on hold, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has main­tained the UNC is ready, able and will­ing to work with Gov­ern­ment on the crime is­sue, adding, “As lead­ers, we owe it to the peo­ple, our sup­port­ers who elect­ed us in­to of­fice, to take T&T for­ward safe­ly...

“Cit­i­zens are cor­rect in re­quest­ing co­op­er­a­tion from elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to stem the vi­o­lent crime cri­sis. There­fore, I reaf­firm my com­mit­ment to lead­ing a team on be­half of the UNC to at­tend the an­ti-crime talks to ex­plain our mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach to the Gov­ern­ment.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged Row­ley to:

• In­vite all will­ing stake­hold­ers to the an­ti-crime talks to con­tribute.

• Lead a cred­i­ble team to rep­re­sent the Gov­ern­ment at these talks.

• Broad­en the top­ics to be dis­cussed at the meet­ings be­yond leg­is­la­tion on­ly.

• In­vite ex­perts and pro­fes­sion­als from var­i­ous sec­tors to ad­vise par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on cre­at­ing a holis­tic ap­proach.

• Im­ple­ment the nu­mer­ous plans, poli­cies and pro­grammes the UNC has pre­sent­ed.

• De­sist from us­ing the talks as po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar and UNC mem­bers were to speak on the is­sue and crime at last night’s UNC St Joseph meet­ing.

Row­ley didn’t re­spond to T&T Guardian’s texted query on the var­i­ous de­vel­op­ments yes­ter­day.