Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

At­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, has part­ed ways with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) af­ter a 13-year tenure with the par­ty.

In a res­ig­na­tion let­ter to par­ty chair­man Dave Tan­coo yes­ter­day, Lal­la said he was grate­ful for the re­la­tion­ships built and ex­pe­ri­ences gained dur­ing his time but said he could no longer en­deav­our in the par­ty af­ter be­ing un­able to ad­vo­cate for in­ter­nal re­form.

“As you well know, I have ad­vo­cat­ed, un­suc­cess­ful­ly, for change in the par­ty for the past nine years (2015 as part of the UNC Loy­al­ists team, 2020 as part of the Lo­tus team and 2024 as part of the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots team) and hav­ing done so, I have ar­rived at the con­clu­sion I can af­ford no more time to my ef­forts in the par­ty.”

Last year, Lal­la un­suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged for the post of par­ty chair­man in the in­ter­nal elec­tion un­der the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate head­ed by Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray. Mem­bers of Paray’s team, which al­so in­clud­ed Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir, Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles and Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly.

Paray’s team failed to se­cure any post con­test­ed in the in­ter­nal elec­tion and were la­belled as “dis­si­dents” by UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Lal­la’s move, which comes in the midst of a gen­er­al elec­tion, sent off alarm bells about his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture, which he was quick to ad­dress dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“I have not been ap­proached by any oth­er par­ty but I will con­tin­ue to find ways to serve my coun­try be­cause it is im­por­tant that we try every­thing pos­si­ble to make Trinidad and To­ba­go a bet­ter place,” Lal­la said.

Pri­or to be­com­ing an of­fi­cial UNC mem­ber in 2012, Lal­la had cam­paigned with the par­ty for the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy since 1995.

Con­tact­ed on Lal­la’s res­ig­na­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she wished Lal­la hap­pi­ness in his fu­ture per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal en­deav­ours.

“As he im­plied in his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, he didn’t achieve his per­son­al po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions with­in the UNC de­spite three at­tempts un­der three dif­fer­ent lead­er­ship con­tenders. The UNC is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and that was the will of the mem­ber­ship when he of­fered him­self and there­fore, he’s well with­in his rights to seek to ful­fil those per­son­al am­bi­tions else­where.

“As with every­one else, we wish him the best. Con­cern­ing the UNC, there is no ef­fect on our gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign as he was not a par­tic­i­pant in any of our prepa­ra­tions.”

While Lal­la’s po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions have now been sev­ered with the UNC, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith is not shut­ting him out from po­ten­tial­ly join­ing his par­ty.

“When in­di­vid­u­als like that de­cide to leave but still wish to serve, if that hap­pens and there is still a de­sire to con­tribute po­lit­i­cal­ly, the doors will al­ways be open for the NTA to have dis­cus­sions with such per­sons.”

How­ev­er, Grif­fith ex­plained that his eyes were on those dis­con­nect­ing from the UNC and how it could af­fect the par­ty at the up­com­ing polls.

“Per­sons like Lar­ry Lal­la, Vas­ant Bharath, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Ra­mona Ram­di­al and the list is long and dis­tin­guished, they have re­alised things are get­ting worse, there is no hope, the things she is say­ing are er­rat­ic, emo­tion­al, not log­i­cal and not con­ducive with what the UNC ini­tial­ly stood for,” Grif­fith said.