National Transformation Alliance (NTA) leader Gary Griffith is ready to mend the rift between his party and the United National Congress.
Both leaders were recently critical of the other over issues concerning crime, firearm users licences and leadership.
Just last week, UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar openly criticised Griffith’s tenure as police commissioner and Griffith responded with criticism of Persad-Bissessar’s leadership.
Speaking on CNC3’s The Morning Brew Show yesterday, Griffith said he was willing to extend an olive branch to the UNC.
However, Griffith asserted that any reconciliation must be based on more than just defeating the People’s National Movement (PNM) in the next general election.
He said T&T needed much more than this.
“It is not going to be based on a marriage of convenience, where we’re just joining up together to defeat the PNM,” Griffith said.
“We’ve been there, and we’ve done that. We saw it in 1986, and we saw it in 2010.
“That bridge constituency of those people calling on the ‘knife and fork persons’, the middle income, those persons who are a PNM or a UNC ‘till they die’ … I have nothing against that. The 200,000 persons on both sides—that is your right, and I respect you for it.”
He added, “What we are working on is to ensure there is a road map towards the transformation of Trinidad and Tobago. Not just joining up to defeat the PNM.”
Griffith said an alliance with the NTA would only strengthen the political efforts of the UNC.
He said, “Almost every single person in the UNC is fully aware that without a strategic alliance, the UNC has never won an election on their own in a three-horse race. Never.”