A former minister who served with the New National Party (NNP) administration has taken a swipe at what he sees as signs that the current Political Leader Emmalin Pierre wants to build “a cabal” to run the party which is seeking to regain power in the upcoming general election.
Speaking to THE NEW TODAY, the minister who is no longer involved in frontline politics took issue with the composition of the 5-member delegation which represented the party at last weekend’s Town Hall meeting in Brooklyn, New York.
The members on the platform were Pierre, as well as Member of Parliament for St Andrew North-east Kate Lewis, Senator Norland Cox of Carriacou and newcomers Adrian Joseph (St George North-west) and Norleen Thompson (St David).
According to the ex-government minister, it was wrong to leave out from the team Senators Dwight Horsford and Dr Myanna Charles as these two can deal with a number of critical issues that the party needed to address at the session.
He said the composition of the NNP delegation was totally wrong and the island’s major opposition force to the ruling Congress party is clearly “barking upon a wrong tree.”
“…You could see the Cabal – the team was inept and ….if they don’t get that right they gone.
Here is Adrian Joseph – that guy has nothing to offer and you’re dragging him behind you.
“You cannot take a team to New York – you must go with a lawyer like Dwight (Horsford).
Anything legal or otherwise, Dwight must be there to defend it and to promote it.
“You must go with Myanna (Charles). Health Care is the Number One stand and this issue of (Project) Polaris – she could deal with it.”
Horsford was lured back to Grenada from his posting as Attorney-General in Anguilla by Mitchell to become the new political leader of the party but the job was given to Pierre who served the last NNP administration in office as Minister of Education.
The ex-government minister was fully in support of Cox’s inclusion in the team to New York as he is due to contest the seat on the sister isle of Carriacou & Petite Martinique for NNP in the upcoming general election.
“If you know New York as I do, New York and Kayak and Carriacou is one.”
The retired NNP political activist pointed out that the bedrock of support for the former MP of Carriacou, the late Foreign Minister Elvin Nimrod came from the support he got from New York among Kayaks living there.
He called on the NNP to change course in order to stand a chance against the Dickon Mitchell-led Congress at the next national poll.
“…If they continue with that they’re going to go downhill. They are already going downhill – it ain’t gone yet – they have a chance (to win the election) but the politics of NNP is completely wrong,” he said.
“I don’t know who is advising them but they are wrong – they’re not into politics, they’re into show business,” he quipped.
The former NNP executive member also commented on the smaller crowd which the NNP attracted at the meeting as opposed to that which assembled around the same time at another venue in Brooklyn to hear from the Member of Parliament for Carriacou & Petite Martinique Tevin Andrew.
He said the poor showing is not because of lack of support for NNP in the Diaspora in New York but the lack of “organisation and proper planning and targeting and timing.”
He pointed out that the current NNP female boss is known to be weak in these three key critical areas needed to take the party forward and “her inability to understand those three things.”
“I am still an NNP. I will not lean away from NNP in giving them support,” he said.
The former government minister insisted that while Pierre seems to want to become the head of a cabal within the party, the former Prime Minister Keith Mitchell is showing signs that the person he really wants to lead the party is his successor in St George North west Adrian Joseph, the former Chief of Protocol.
The NNP was booted out of office in 2022 despite Keith Mitchell’s dominance in local politics with electoral victories in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2013 and 2018.