Yvonne Webb

One day af­ter he re­signed from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), San Fer­nan­do coun­cil­lor Dar­ren McLeod swore he would con­tin­ue to do his du­ty with­out fear or favour as an in­de­pen­dent. Yes­ter­day he took his seat as nor­mal at the cor­po­ra­tion's month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing. It was tense as an is­sue in­volv­ing him re­sult­ed in the meet­ing be­ing abort­ed. As he left the meet­ing, McLeod was ac­cost­ed by a woman from Princes Town who said she had in­vest­ed mon­ey in his re­al es­tate com­pa­ny which went bust. He said she was not the on­ly per­son he owed mon­ey. He ad­mit­ted the com­pa­ny fold­ed and he did not have the fi­nan­cial where­with­al now but had every in­ten­tion of set­tling his fi­nan­cial is­sues.

McLeod, the coun­cil­lor for Co­coyea/Tarou­ba, said poor re­spons­es and a lack of sup­port by the rul­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had forced him to re­sign. He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the UNC and the PP. He said peo­ple have brand­ed him as a trou­ble­mak­er and a rebel but he had been forced to use un­usu­al tac­tics to get the job done. He said: "Peo­ple do not un­der­stand that every­thing I have tried to do in my elec­toral dis­trict has been sab­o­taged. I have com­plained to the Prime Min­is­ter. Noth­ing has been done." He sub­mit­ted his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in her ca­pac­i­ty as leader of the UNC. It was hand-de­liv­ered to the UNC's Rien­zi Com­plex head­quar­ters, Cou­va, on Wednes­day. McLeod has been em­broiled in sev­er­al con­tro­ver­sies with San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray. He said no one knew the dif­fi­cul­ties he had faced as he at­tempt­ed to serve the peo­ple who elect­ed him.