SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Open­ing the NTA’s San Fer­nan­do West Of­fice at Leroy Cal­liste Street, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, along with can­di­date for the area Dr Kevin Sar­ran, the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith as­sured he will not en­gage in gut­ter pol­i­tics as he wished prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young well.

Grif­fith al­so urged de­trac­tors to stop de­mon­is­ing Young’s for­mer step-daugh­ter, who he re­vealed is ac­tu­al­ly his cousin.

The young woman was ar­rest­ed in 2018 on a drug charge dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.

He as­sured the NTA will not en­gage or align it­self with any­one in­volved in mud-sling­ing.

“There’s a young la­dy, her face con­tin­ues to be plas­tered on the me­dia be­cause of try­ing to link her with that in­di­vid­ual (Young) and that is be­cause she was ar­rest­ed by my­self and they con­tin­ue to de­monise that young la­dy to re­fer to her as the step­daugh­ter of the fu­ture prime min­is­ter. To try to go out of their way to de­stroy one man you are de­stroy­ing the life of an­oth­er girl be­cause she made a mis­take.

“Let me clar­i­fy that girl is my cousin, so de­monise me. I have no qualms to state that, yes, she is my fam­i­ly. She’s a Daniel and my moth­er was a Daniel and so what?”

Com­ment­ing on Young be­ing se­lect­ed to re­place Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley when he steps down, he re­called that as po­lice com­mis­sion­er he worked with Young and they made a very good team.

“We were able to han­dle COVID. We were able to han­dle se­cu­ri­ty and he pro­vid­ed me with the sup­port, the lead­er­ship, (and) or­gan­is­ing meet­ings. I have seen him work in his ca­pac­i­ty as a leader and it is dif­fi­cult for me to crit­i­cise him on it.” 

He added that peo­ple should be judged on their per­for­mance.

“I wish Mr Stu­art Young well as the fu­ture prime min­is­ter. I give him the as­sur­ance that the NTA, we are not here to make the coun­try un­govern­able. We are here to pro­vide sup­port for the State, not the PNM, that is our job as pa­tri­ots of this coun­try and we will con­tin­ue to give him that sup­port un­til he de­cides af­ter the elec­tion to re­lin­quish his po­si­tion to the NTA af­ter we re­place them.”

Grif­fith dis­missed any pos­si­bil­i­ty of an al­liance be­tween the NTA and PNM.

How­ev­er, he was un­cer­tain about one with the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) now that a new po­lit­i­cal leader, Prakash Ra­mad­har, has been elect­ed. He said he was wait­ing to see if their MOU will be ho­n­oured.

“I was con­cerned and it’s noth­ing to hide that his very first state­ment when he got back in­to pol­i­tics was to praise Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“The ju­ry still out, we will see if a cer­tain po­lit­i­cal leader is go­ing to get a safe seat of St Au­gus­tine or Ch­agua­nas West.”

De­spite this, Grif­fith said he re­mained con­fi­dent about the NTA’s chances come the gen­er­al elec­tion.

He said that once elect­ed they would im­me­di­ate­ly launch an in­tel­li­gence-led crime ini­tia­tive called Weaponised Op­er­a­tion Land Force (WOLF).  He said it would be among over 100 poli­cies to be im­ple­ment­ed and would con­sist of 1,000 of the most trained, qual­i­fied and poly­graphed per­sons.

The can­di­dates who were pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day in­clud­ed Gail Cas­tana­da for Port-of-Spain South, Nico­lene Tay­lor-Chin­chamee for Arou­ca/Lopinot, Jairz­in­ho Rigs­by for Ari­ma and Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein for To­co/San­gre Grande.