Four mem­bers of the UNC’s La Brea Con­stituen­cy Ex­ec­u­tive have re­signed from their posts and from the par­ty. In a let­ter is­sued to UNC chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kan­hai, and po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dat­ed March 9, the con­stituen­cy’s wel­fare of­fi­cer Jes­si­ca Wat­son-Girod, par­ty or­gan­is­er Chinelle Roberts, elec­tions of­fi­cer Nico­la Sylvester, and sec­re­tary Leemoy Lee an­nounced their res­ig­na­tions with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

The let­ter stat­ed: “Our de­ci­sion is not tak­en light­ly. How­ev­er, the bla­tant dis­re­spect shown to Al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts af­ter he raised crit­i­cal is­sues in the in­ter­est of the par­ty has made it abun­dant­ly clear that the UNC no longer val­ues those who gen­uine­ly want the par­ty to suc­ceed. In­stead, the on­ly re­quire­ment for sur­vival with­in the par­ty is blind loy­al­ty to you, the po­lit­i­cal leader.”

The four mem­bers said that when they joined the UNC, it was a par­ty “built on prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy, in­ter­nal de­bate, and a col­lec­tive vi­sion for na­tion­al progress.” “What ex­ists to­day is an in­su­lar cult of per­son­al­i­ty where in­de­pen­dent thought is si­lenced and those who dare to chal­lenge fail­ures are cast aside,” the let­ter stat­ed.