Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Garvin Si­mon­ette has re­signed as a sen­a­tor, hours af­ter he was scrapped as Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald's re­place­ment in Cab­i­net.

Si­mon­ette is­sued a state­ment to the me­dia Mon­day af­ter­noon an­nounc­ing his res­ig­na­tion.

He said he sent the prime min­is­ter his res­ig­na­tion from the Sen­ate af­ter his ar­rest record for a Dri­ving Un­der the In­flu­ence (DUI) charge in the Unit­ed States was cir­cu­lat­ed on­line.

He said he al­so "de­clined" his ap­point­ment to the Cab­i­net as the new Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Si­mon­ette said it would be "in­ap­pro­pri­ate" to ac­cept the Cab­i­net po­si­tion.

He said he want­ed to re­lieve the prime min­is­ter and the PNM of the "dis­tract­ing bur­dens."

He al­so apol­o­gised for any em­bar­rass­ment caused.