Akash Sama­roo

Amid deep­en­ing in­ter­nal tur­moil with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), for­mer sen­a­tor Joel Primus has re­signed from the par­ty af­ter more than 25 years, say­ing it has drift­ed away from the val­ues of in­ter­ra­cial har­mo­ny, sol­i­dar­i­ty, uni­ty and ser­vice to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that ini­tial­ly at­tract­ed him to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Primus, who joined the PNM in 1999 and served twice in the Sen­ate, said his de­ci­sion was the re­sult of years of re­flec­tion and was not a di­rect re­sponse to the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning and the con­stituen­cy’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive.