Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne is now of­fi­cial­ly the out­go­ing UNC MP for Tabaquite.

She ac­knowl­edged that the UNC’s lead­er­ship in­formed her of the de­ci­sion to choose a new can­di­date for Tabaquite. “I un­der­stand the Par­ty’s de­ci­sion and be­lieve the se­lect­ed can­di­date re­flects its present phi­los­o­phy,” she said, wish­ing her con­stituents well as they en­ter a “new era of rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

Haynes-Al­leyne was con­sid­ered one of the UNC "dis­si­dents" who went up against Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar 's slate in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion. She was the fi­nal dis­si­dent to learn her fate af­ter Rush­ton Paray (Ma­yaro), Dr Rai Rag­bir (Cu­mu­to Man­zanil­la), Rod­ney Charles (Na­pari­ma), Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly (Ch­agua­nas West). 

Haynes-Al­leyne thanked her con­stituents for al­low­ing her to serve as their MP, call­ing it “an ho­n­our” and re­flect­ing on the progress made through col­lec­tive ad­vo­ca­cy.

“I have main­tained an un­apolo­getic com­mit­ment to a new brand of pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go, one that pro­motes cit­i­zen in­volve­ment and pol­i­cy-based plat­forms aimed at ad­vanc­ing our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” she said.

How­ev­er, the UNC has not yet an­nounced who will re­place her. The an­nounce­ment could come tonight or to­mor­row, which is nom­i­na­tion day.

She called on cit­i­zens to be dis­cern­ing dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son, urg­ing them to pay close at­ten­tion to can­di­dates of­fer­ing “work­able so­lu­tions to the is­sues fac­ing our na­tion.”

“We must el­e­vate our ap­proach to gov­er­nance so that we de­vel­op more proac­tive poli­cies, strength­en our in­sti­tu­tions and em­pow­er our hu­man cap­i­tal,” she said, adding that progress is pos­si­ble if the na­tion pri­ori­tis­es peo­ple over pol­i­tics.

Haynes-Al­leyne said she re­mains con­fi­dent that a new po­lit­i­cal frame­work is on the hori­zon for Trinidad and To­ba­go—one dri­ven by democ­ra­cy, trans­paren­cy, and eq­ui­ty.