Ian Wa­son

Free­lance Writer

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith is sat­is­fied with the out­come of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE), claim­ing the NTA has be­come the “de fac­to” third par­ty in the coun­try.

"If you take the rest of the par­ties and add up their votes, we got more than them and we on­ly con­test­ed thir­ty-one seats," Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia last night.

At the end of the count­ing process, which showed a 7-7 tie be­tween the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the main op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the leader of the eight-month-old NTA ap­plaud­ed his par­ty’s abil­i­ty to “bridge the gap” in seats pre­vi­ous­ly held by the PNM.

While as­sert­ing that it was “no longer au­to­mat­ic” that the PNM has con­trol of the East-West Cor­ri­dor, Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that the NTA could now use the elec­tion re­sult as a spring­board for the next gen­er­al elec­tion in 2025.

The NTA leader al­so boast­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had “my ad­dress in his head”, while sug­gest­ing that Row­ley spent much of his time on the LGE plat­form at­tack­ing him (Grif­fith) even though the PNM was over 60 years, while his par­ty was less than a year old.

As for his par­ty’s al­liance with the UNC for the LGE, Grif­fith stat­ed that be­ing part of a strate­gic al­liance does not mean that you are "part of that par­ty”.

“Dif­fer­ent par­ties have dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ples and so forth," he main­tained.

While the NTA was un­able to cap­ture any seats un­der the first past the post sys­tem, Gri­fith main­tained that it did make an im­pact in the LG poll.

"You will see that in every sin­gle one of the 31 seats we have closed the gap, some of them tremen­dous­ly to the point that we may very well have an al­der­man in Ari­ma and in Diego Mar­tin. We are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion," he stressed.

Grif­fith, who is a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, al­so ar­gued that in or­der for third par­ties to have an im­pact on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape, it was im­por­tant for them to forge “strate­gic al­liances”.

"The on­ly way we could be rep­re­sent­ed prop­er­ly and to rep­re­sent our cit­i­zens is by be­ing part of a gov­ern­ment and the on­ly way we can do that is by form­ing an al­liance,” he ex­plained.

As the re­sults came in at the NTA’s head­quar­ters at the cor­ner of Duke Street and Wright­son Road, deputy lLeader Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith en­cour­aged the sup­port­ers of the par­ty to "lift your chin up", while her hus­band told Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed that the aim for the par­ty in its first elec­tions was sim­ply to have a foothold "in the cor­ri­dor”.

“It will as­sist in tak­ing cer­tain seats away from the PNM," he in­sist­ed.