Talks be­tween Garvin Nicholas and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) have col­lapsed, prompt­ing the Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND) leader to con­firm he will in­de­pen­dent­ly con­test the Diego Mar­tin North East seat in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

In a state­ment post­ed to so­cial me­dia, Nicholas said it had “al­ways [been his] in­ten­tion to con­test Diego Mar­tin North East in 2025,” and that he made this clear when the UNC in­vit­ed him to dis­cus­sions about form­ing a “coali­tion of in­ter­est.”

He ac­knowl­edged there was “cer­tain­ly util­i­ty in sug­ges­tion of work­ing with the UNC,” not­ing pol­i­cy syn­er­gies and the po­ten­tial to con­sol­i­date op­po­si­tion votes in what he called “a dif­fi­cult con­stituen­cy.” But, he added, “the UNC’s lead­er­ship have cho­sen a path in­con­sis­tent with my plan for DMNE and quite frankly in my view, in­im­i­cal to the in­ter­ests not on­ly of the peo­ple of DMNE but of an en­tire coun­try.”