RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts says he has no plans to re­sign from the par­ty—at least not yet—even though he has pub­licly en­dorsed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Ran­dall Mitchell over his UNC par­ty’s can­di­date, Clyde El­der.

In a video post­ed to his Face­book page, Roberts made his en­dorse­ment pub­lic, say­ing, “Af­ter lis­ten­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter and the can­di­date for La Brea, I have de­cid­ed ful­ly to en­dorse Ran­dall Mitchell as the next MP for the con­stituen­cy of La Brea.”

Roberts dis­missed the UNC’s slo­gan “Yel­low is the code,” de­clar­ing in­stead, “Red is the word.”

The al­der­man, who has dis­tanced him­self from the UNC af­ter join­ing Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions, said his loy­al­ty has al­ways been to the peo­ple, not “par­ty boss­es.”

“But let me be ab­solute­ly clear, my loy­al­ty was nev­er to par­ty boss­es but it is to the peo­ple,” Roberts said.

To those who de­scribed him as an op­por­tunist, Roberts said: “I made a choice not for pow­er or po­si­tion. Not mak­ing that choice would mean be­tray­al of the very peo­ple I sought to serve and if that ruf­fles feath­ers, so be it.”

Roberts al­so in­sist­ed he had not crossed the floor from the UNC to the PNM, even though he was no longer hap­py with the par­ty.

“I will keep do­ing what I have al­ways done—show­ing up, speak­ing out, and putting peo­ple be­fore pol­i­tics. If that of­fends peo­ple, well, sor­ry,” he said.

Asked why he has not yet re­signed from the UNC, Roberts said he is await­ing a re­sponse to a let­ter he sent to UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­quest­ing a fi­nan­cial au­dit of the UNC’s ac­counts, due on April 30. He said he must re­main a mem­ber to make such a re­quest.

De­spite hold­ing a UNC ti­tle, Roberts has been a reg­u­lar pres­ence at PNM events.

When con­tact­ed, El­der said he had no com­ment on Roberts’ ac­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed Roberts as a non-is­sue and did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment yes­ter­day.