Four mem­bers of the UNC’s La Brea Con­stituen­cy Ex­ec­u­tive have re­signed from their posts and from the par­ty. In a let­ter is­sued to UNC chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kan­hai, and po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dat­ed March 9, the con­stituen­cy’s wel­fare of­fi­cer Jes­si­ca Wat­son-Girod, par­ty or­gan­is­er Chinelle Roberts, elec­tions of­fi­cer Nico­la Sylvester, and sec­re­tary Leemoy Lee an­nounced their res­ig­na­tions with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

The let­ter stat­ed: “Our de­ci­sion is not tak­en light­ly. How­ev­er, the bla­tant dis­re­spect shown to Al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts af­ter he raised crit­i­cal is­sues in the in­ter­est of the par­ty has made it abun­dant­ly clear that the UNC no longer val­ues those who gen­uine­ly want the par­ty to suc­ceed. In­stead, the on­ly re­quire­ment for sur­vival with­in the par­ty is blind loy­al­ty to you, the po­lit­i­cal leader.”

The four mem­bers said that when they joined the UNC, it was a par­ty “built on prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy, in­ter­nal de­bate, and a col­lec­tive vi­sion for na­tion­al progress.” “What ex­ists to­day is an in­su­lar cult of per­son­al­i­ty where in­de­pen­dent thought is si­lenced and those who dare to chal­lenge fail­ures are cast aside,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The four mem­bers said they could not, in good con­science, con­tin­ue to be part of an or­gan­i­sa­tion “that pun­ish­es in­tegri­ty and re­wards syco­phancy.” Their res­ig­na­tions took ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly. Last week, Al­der­man Roberts called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to pro­vide a full au­dit of the par­ty’s fi­nances over the past decade. Roberts has giv­en the UNC un­til April 30 to dis­close the de­tails.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar when asked to com­ment on his call re­spond­ed via What­sApp say­ing: “That’s ir­rel­e­vant. Non is­sue.” In De­cem­ber, Roberts threat­ened to present ev­i­dence to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau and the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor over al­leged im­pro­pri­ety at the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. Con­tact­ed for com­ment, chair­man Tan­coo said the most re­cent res­ig­na­tions were “the or­ches­trat­ed res­ig­na­tions which the po­lit­i­cal leader spoke about.”

Tan­coo said: “It is an ir­refutable fact that the UNC stands as the sole bas­tion that has bold­ly and un­wa­ver­ing­ly held the PNM ac­count­able over the past nine years.” he added: “This call­ing is not for the faint of heart. This vo­ca­tion re­quires dis­ci­plined team play­ers who are brave, com­mit­ted and loy­al to the peo­ple of our na­tion and the prin­ci­ples of our par­ty.”

Tan­coo fur­ther said the UNC will re­main stead­fast in de­fence of pub­lic in­ter­est and will main­tain a state of readi­ness for the forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions. “Noth­ing will dis­tract us from our du­ty,” he added. Guardian Me­dia has reached out to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Deputy Lead­ers Jear­lean John and Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and is await­ing their re­spons­es.