The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance has ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of “po­lit­i­cal pla­gia­rism dis­guised as pol­i­cy.”

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the NTA said “It is wide­ly ac­knowl­edged that the PNM has failed in mat­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, many cit­i­zens be­lieve the choice for en­sur­ing their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty lies be­tween the NTA and the UNC.”

It said the UNC has in­ten­si­fied its cam­paign rhetoric on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in an at­tempt to sway mem­bers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices and their fam­i­lies.

How­ev­er, the NTA said, “It has be­come em­bar­rass­ing­ly ap­par­ent that every pol­i­cy pro­pos­al they’ve pre­sent­ed is a di­rect copy of re­search, drafts, and ini­tia­tives de­vel­oped by NTA Po­lit­i­cal Leader, Gary Grif­fith—some of which were im­ple­ment­ed dur­ing his tenure as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vi­sor.”

The NTA said its ac­cu­sa­tion is not po­lit­i­cal ban­ter as it has “the emails, pol­i­cy doc­u­ments, and of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate this claim.”

It ex­plained, “These in­clude: 1) The pro­pos­al to split the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­to a Min­istry of De­fence and a Min­istry of Home Af­fairs,

2) The cre­ation of a Min­istry of Jus­tice,

3) The $1,000 month­ly sup­port for Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices fam­i­lies,

4) The $1 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion for fam­i­lies of of­fi­cers killed in the line of du­ty, and

5) Even the pro­pos­al to pro­vide firearms to cit­i­zens stems from Grif­fith’s suc­cess as com­mis­sion­er when he ap­proved over 5,000 Firearm User Li­cences (FULs) for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

The NTA added, “What the UNC is do­ing is not lead­er­ship. It is po­lit­i­cal pla­gia­rism dis­guised as pol­i­cy. The cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go must not be de­ceived in­to re­plac­ing one form of in­com­pe­tence with an­oth­er.

“Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty tran­scends mere pol­i­tics. It isn’t about plat­form slo­gans. It’s a sci­ence, a mat­ter of se­cu­ri­ty man­age­ment. It de­mands in­di­vid­u­als with tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, re­al-world ex­pe­ri­ence, pro­fes­sion­al train­ing, and high-lev­el strate­gic ca­pa­bil­i­ty to for­mu­late and im­ple­ment ef­fec­tive poli­cies.”

The NTA in its state­ment asked both the PNM and UNC, “If these poli­cies weren’t de­liv­ered dur­ing your tenure in gov­ern­ment, why should we, the peo­ple, be­lieve that you will im­ple­ment them now?”

It said be­yond po­lit­i­cal will, com­pe­ten­cy is es­sen­tial and said this was the rea­son why the Min­istry of Jus­tice, es­tab­lished un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment led by UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar “col­lapsed” be­cause those re­spon­si­ble for its ex­e­cu­tion lacked the nec­es­sary un­der­stand­ing.

It added, “The UNC is pro­mot­ing poli­cies they did not orig­i­nate, do not com­pre­hend, and are un­qual­i­fied to man­age. They lack in­di­vid­u­als with­in their ranks with the re­quired train­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence, or se­nior-lev­el se­cu­ri­ty back­ground to lead such trans­for­ma­tion.

“The re­al­i­ty is sim­ple: with­out un­der­stand­ing the com­plex­i­ty of pol­i­cy de­sign with­in the se­cu­ri­ty frame­work, ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion is im­pos­si­ble. This is pre­cise­ly the case with both the UNC and PNM, hav­ing Min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and po­ten­tial can­di­dates wait­ing with no com­pe­ten­cy in the field.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to UNC shad­ow na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Sad­dam Ho­sein for a com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse.