Dr Rai Rag­bir, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, an­nounced his im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), ex­press­ing deep dis­ap­point­ment with the par­ty's cur­rent di­rec­tion. In a press re­lease, Dr. Rag­bir stat­ed that the UNC "no longer up­holds the val­ues it once rep­re­sent­ed" and has be­come in­flu­enced by in­di­vid­u­als whose con­duct he finds "deeply trou­bling."

This res­ig­na­tion fol­lows his ear­li­er de­c­la­ra­tion not to seek re-elec­tion in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion. 

Dr Rag­bir em­pha­sized that, with his term as MP con­clud­ing, he sees "no rea­son to re­main af­fil­i­at­ed with a par­ty that has lost its moral com­pass." He reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to serv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in oth­er ca­pac­i­ties.

Dr Rag­bir's de­par­ture adds to a se­ries of re­cent res­ig­na­tions with­in the UNC. No­tably, for­mer tem­po­rary sen­a­tor Jow­elle De Souza re­signed two weeks ago, cit­ing con­cerns over the par­ty's lead­er­ship and a per­ceived lack of com­mit­ment to mean­ing­ful ad­vo­ca­cy. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, four mem­bers of the UNC's La Brea con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive re­signed last week, ex­press­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the par­ty's in­ter­nal dy­nam­ics. 

De­spite these de­par­tures, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mains op­ti­mistic about the par­ty's prospects in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion. She char­ac­ter­ized the re­cent res­ig­na­tions as "or­ches­trat­ed" and as­sert­ed that they would not desta­bi­lize the par­ty's cam­paign.