Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza re­signed from the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) yes­ter­day, af­ter tak­ing is­sue with the par­ty’s lead­er­ship and tra­jec­to­ry. She said the fi­nal straw was an al­leged re­mark by deputy leader Jear­lean John that the po­lit­i­cal leader had “tak­en a lot of heat” from re­li­gious groups for De Souza.

De Souza made his­to­ry in 2022 as T&T’s first trans­gen­der sen­a­tor, serv­ing as a tem­po­rary UNC sen­a­tor.

Her res­ig­na­tion was the lat­est in a se­ries of de­par­tures from the par­ty in the last month. Ma­yaro MP Dr Rai Rag­bir with­drew his nom­i­na­tion for can­di­da­cy last month and at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la re­signed last week. La Brea al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts al­so re­signed from par­ty posts and Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly with­drew his nom­i­na­tion from the screen­ing process.

In De Souza’s res­ig­na­tion let­ter, which was sent to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and par­ty chair­man Dave Tan­coo, she said when she was in­vit­ed to serve as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor, she was as­sured the ap­point­ment was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vo­cate for crit­i­cal is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly an­i­mal rights and con­cerns af­fect­ing San Fer­nan­do, on a na­tion­al lev­el.

“How­ev­er, since that time, it has be­come abun­dant­ly clear that my ap­point­ment was nev­er about gen­uine ad­vo­ca­cy but in­stead a po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vre that the lead­er­ship hoped would eclipse the ap­point­ment of Sen­a­tor Ritchie (sic) Sookhai,” De Souza said.

“Since my tenure in the Sen­ate, no fur­ther dis­cus­sions have tak­en place re­gard­ing these is­sues, and there has been no in­di­ca­tion from the lead­er­ship that they were ever tru­ly on the agen­da. Be­yond my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence, I’m deeply trou­bled by the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry of UNC. In­stead of ad­dress­ing valid con­cerns raised by par­ty sup­port­ers, the lead­er­ship has cho­sen to dis­miss, dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect dis­sent­ing voic­es, telling those who are un­hap­py that they’re free to leave.”

She added, “This ap­proach is rem­i­nis­cent of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s in­fa­mous state­ment that dis­sat­is­fied cit­i­zens should go live some­where else. It’s now ev­i­dent that there is no longer space for me in the UNC, nor for many oth­ers who share my con­cerns.”

De Souza said she made the res­ig­na­tion let­ter pub­lic to en­sure her name is of­fi­cial­ly re­moved from UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tion vot­er list.

She added, “I want it to be made un­equiv­o­cal­ly clear that I will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in any in­ter­nal UNC elec­tions. I’m not a con­tin­u­ing source of and/or fa­cil­i­ta­tor of fundrais­ing. It’s with great dis­ap­point­ment that I take this step, but I do so with the hope the UNC can one day re­turn to the found­ing prin­ci­ples ex­em­pli­fied in the strug­gle of the late great Mr Bas­deo Pan­day, Mr John Humphrey, Pt Dr Paras­ram, Mr Kelvin Ram­nath and Mr Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC.

“These prin­ci­ples which once in­spired so many to be­lieve in the par­ty’s vi­sion have been all aban­doned by the present lead­er­ship/Na­tex/Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (ex­cept the De­cent 5) and sen­a­tors.”

The De­cent 5 ref­er­enced “dis­si­dent” UNC MPs Rag­bir, Ram­bal­ly, Rush­ton Paray, Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne and Rod­ney Charles.

De Souza lat­er told Guardian Me­dia she had al­so pon­dered a dis­cus­sion last year with UNC col­leagues, when she claimed deputy leader John told her the leader had “tak­en a lot of heat for her” from re­li­gious bod­ies.

“I was heart­bro­ken and out­raged. I asked them to name who. Many RC priests and Hin­du pun­dits come to my busi­ness­place and no­body’s ever shown me that. The leader who was present didn’t cor­rect John. I was hurt and had told her about it so she knew I was up­set.”

De Souza added: “If they had prob­lems with me en­ter­ing the UNC as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor they should have told the leader. It shows no prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion with each oth­er. When I en­tered the Sen­ate I wasn’t treat­ed as I should have been by UNC mem­bers, but the PNM treat­ed me well. How­ev­er, T&T has a long way to go to be di­verse and in­clu­sive,”

She said she al­so took a lot of heat for the par­ty and lost friends. She said she re­cent­ly sup­port­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s views against poli­cies on gen­der re­as­sign­ment surg­eries for mi­nors but “can’t take the fight­ing ... it’s bet­ter I go..”

De Souza said she’s not join­ing an­oth­er par­ty and didn’t know if a third force may come, but since she does pub­lic work dai­ly, her door is al­ways open.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t re­spond to calls for com­ment on De Souza’s let­ter and her claim about John’s re­mark.

How­ev­er, chair­man Tan­coo said: “It’s an undis­put­ed fact that the UNC has con­sis­tent­ly been the one group that has held this PNM to ac­count in the pub­lic do­main and that the same UNC has open­ly of­fered a space to a vast num­ber of in­ter­est groups and in­di­vid­u­als to have a pub­lic voice which they nev­er had be­fore. I re­call that there was much neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty when UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­lowed this very same in­di­vid­ual an op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve in the Sen­ate. But this is the na­ture of pol­i­tics for some.

“The UNC re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with any­one who shares our con­cern for the wel­fare of our coun­try and who is will­ing to work for the bet­ter T&T we all know is pos­si­ble.”