Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), Gary Grif­fith, said his par­ty an­tic­i­pat­ed the April 28 elec­tion date and has been prepar­ing ac­cord­ing­ly.

“We have not been caught with our pants down. We have not been am­bushed. We an­tic­i­pat­ed this date, which is why we ac­tu­al­ly had our first ma­jor po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in St. Joseph just last week,” Grif­fith said. “We start­ed the cam­paign in ad­vance, an­tic­i­pat­ing April 28, where sev­er­al hun­dred per­sons at­tend­ed.”

Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties call­ing for a gen­er­al elec­tion may not have been as pre­pared. “Be care­ful what you ask for. You may very well get it,” he said.

He de­scribed this elec­tion as a rare op­por­tu­ni­ty for vot­ers to choose a le­git­i­mate third par­ty, some­thing the coun­try has not seen in near­ly two decades. “This is the first time in 18 years that the coun­try will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a third choice. The last time they had a le­git­i­mate bona fide third choice would have been in 2007 with the Con­gress of the Peo­ple,” he said. “To those 148,000 odd per­sons who are still around, this is your op­por­tu­ni­ty yet again to vote for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty not based on blind loy­al­ty, but based on if you be­lieve that that par­ty can pro­vide you with what you re­quire over the next five years.”

Grif­fith al­so ap­pealed to younger vot­ers who have nev­er had an al­ter­na­tive be­yond the two dom­i­nant po­lit­i­cal par­ties. “Per­sons al­so who are be­tween the ages of 18 to 35 in that last 18 years, you nev­er had that third choice. You have you’re get­ting that choice now,” he said.

He called for a peace­ful elec­tion sea­son and warned against di­vi­sive tac­tics. “This year is go­ing to be a gen­er­al elec­tion. It is not a war. So, I will ask those in­di­vid­u­als, please do not let politi­cians de­lib­er­ate­ly go out to cause di­vi­sion, ha­tred be­tween our cit­i­zens of this coun­try,” he said. “There is go­ing to be a day called April 29th and we will all be cit­i­zens of this coun­try.”

Grif­fith ac­cused a ri­val po­lit­i­cal par­ty of de­lib­er­ate­ly sow­ing dis­cord. “Yes, there’s a po­lit­i­cal par­ty ac­tu­al­ly con­tract­ed some­one to spit heat and di­vi­sion and bit­ter­ness in the hope that that will cause them to win votes by pain, di­vide and con­quer. We have no in­ten­tion to go down that road,” he said. “I will ask all po­lit­i­cal par­ties and politi­cians. Let us try to keep it clean. Let us not try to di­vide the coun­try be­cause of our greed for pow­er.”

He urged cit­i­zens to re­main unit­ed re­gard­less of the out­come of the elec­tion. “At the end of the day, come April the twen­ty-ninth, re­gard­less of the re­sult, there’s go­ing to be one prime min­is­ter and one gov­ern­ment that we all need to sup­port,” Grif­fith said