On the cusp of the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tions, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has faced nine res­ig­na­tions in 24 days.

Those who left the par­ty have cit­ed be­ing dis­il­lu­sioned and said they were not pleased with the di­rec­tion the UNC has been head­ing.

The res­ig­na­tions ten­dered be­tween Feb­ru­ary 24 and March 19, 2025, have been the high­est for the UNC since Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took lead­er­ship of the par­ty in 2010. De­scrib­ing the re­cent string of de­par­tures as ir­rel­e­vant and a non-is­sue to the par­ty’s gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the 36-year-old UNC can win the up­com­ing polls. Amid the flur­ry of res­ig­na­tions, she urged par­ty sup­port­ers at the St Mary’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School two weeks ago not to be fooled by UNC trai­tors who switched their al­le­giance to the PNM.

She ac­cused for­mer par­ty mem­bers of act­ing in self-in­ter­est. “There are a few who are for them­selves—greedy, pow­er-thirsty, and hun­gry. One or two have sold out the UNC for promis­es of 30 pieces of sil­ver,” she said. Those who turned against the par­ty, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, were fight­ing their self­ish agen­das.

“When they can’t get their way, they will end up on the oth­er side and turn against you and try to de­stroy your UNC fam­i­ly which we have fought so tire­less­ly to nur­ture and build.” In a shock­ing de­vel­op­ment on March 9, four UNC La Brea con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers sev­ered their ties with the par­ty. In a let­ter ad­dressed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar and par­ty’s chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, wel­fare of­fi­cer Jes­si­ca Wat­son-Girod, par­ty or­gan­is­er Chinelle Roberts, elec­tions of­fi­cer Nico­la Sylvester and sec­re­tary Leemoy Lee re­signed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

They cit­ed bla­tant dis­re­spect shown to Al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts af­ter he raised crit­i­cal is­sues in the par­ty’s in­ter­est. The quadru­ple’s res­ig­na­tions came af­ter Roberts quit as chair­man of the UNC La Brea con­stituen­cy, shad­ow coun­cil­lor for Siparia West/Fyz­abad and co­or­di­na­tor of the La Brea con­stituen­cy on Feb­ru­ary 27. Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, was the sixth per­son to bow out of the UNC.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, brushed off Lal­la’s res­ig­na­tion, stat­ing it would not af­fect the par­ty’s gen­er­al elec­tion plans. Three weeks af­ter quit­ting the par­ty, Lal­la at­tend­ed the PNM’s pre­sen­ta­tion of can­di­dates last Sun­day at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain.

On March 5,  Jow­elle De Souza re­signed, mak­ing it the sev­enth ex­it.  De Souza was T&T’s first trans­gen­der sen­a­tor. The list of res­ig­na­tions grew with Al­lan Aaron Lutch­man step­ping down as as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of the Fyz­abad con­stituen­cy on March 17 af­ter giv­ing 25 years of ser­vice to the par­ty.

On Wednes­day,  Dr Rai Rag­bir an­nounced his im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion, stat­ing the par­ty no longer held the val­ues it once pre­sent­ed.

Oth­ers who left the UNC in 2023/2024

1) Kaveesh Siew­di­al youth arm of­fi­cer (lat­er joined the PNM)

2) Shel­don “Fish” Gar­cia, Ari­ma Cen­tral coun­cil­lor ( joined the PNM)

3) Mar­cus Gird­harie Mara­bel­la South/Vista­bel­la coun­cil­lor ( joined the PNM)

4) Samuel Sankar War­renville/Kel­ly Vil­lage coun­cil­lor

5) Siparia West/Fyz­abad coun­cil­lor Ja­son Ali (switched to PNM)

6) Safraz Ali, for­mer Barataria/ San Juan and St Joseph PRO.

7) De­feat­ed UNC’s 2020 Diego Mar­tin West can­di­date Mar­sha Walk­er re­signed (now Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date)

8) For­mer UNC sen­a­tor Tahar­qa Obi­ka (joined the PNM).