Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day he is not buy­ing the re­cent ap­par­ent break­down in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day at a me­dia brief­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, af­ter his re­turn from the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Sum­mit in Guyana.

Asked what he thought of the pub­lic fall-out be­tween the UNC and the NTA, Dr Row­ley replied, “Have they? Don’t let them fool you, that is their very na­ture. We are fo­cus­ing on the PNM and as we in the PNM say, we are held to a high­er stan­dard and we trust that we will live up to those stan­dards, be­cause God knows, Trinidad and To­ba­go needs the PNM.”

Dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was time for third par­ties to pull their weight if they want to con­tin­ue their al­liances with the UNC. She al­so said the par­ty would not tol­er­ate dis­re­spect from third par­ties.

In a re­tort to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, Grif­fith said it was she who was be­ing dis­re­spect­ful and dis­mis­sive of the con­tri­bu­tion of third par­ties. He told UNC sup­port­ers the par­ty could not go it alone in the next gen­er­al elec­tion and it was time Per­sad-Bisses­sar un­der­stood this.