For­mer Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty leader Phillip Alexan­der has con­firmed that the re­cent suc­cess­ful law­suits against him by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day were what caused him to quit pub­lic life and re­sign as PEP leader.

Alexan­der con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day fol­low­ing a query about his de­ci­sion to re­sign, which he an­nounced last Sun­day.

In Oc­to­ber, the court or­dered Alexan­der to pay Im­bert $525,000 in dam­ages af­ter los­ing a defama­tion case con­cern­ing false al­le­ga­tions against Im­bert in 2020.

On Tues­day, Alexan­der was or­dered by the court to pay $850,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to Pan­day for defama­tion for false re­marks about Pan­day pre­ced­ing the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Asked if this caused the de­ci­sion to quit pub­lic life, Alexan­der said,”Ab­solute­ly. “

He claimed,”The use of the courts to si­lence po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents should be a wor­ry to every free-think­ing cit­i­zen of T&T. I’ll be say­ing more on this in the near fu­ture.”

In a sub­se­quent state­ment, Alexan­der said, “Mem­bers of the pub­lic have been notic­ing these seem­ing­ly end­less law­suits and ac­com­pa­ny­ing awards and have been ask­ing me about them. Some have asked if this is in any way con­nect­ed to me step­ping out of pol­i­tics. The short an­swer is yes.I need­ed to in­su­late the par­ty we built while I at­tempt­ed to deal with all of it.”

“There have in fact been ten of these law­suits in dif­fer­ent stages of com­ple­tion. I be­lieve it is time the pub­lic was made aware and brought up to date with all of it and the hun­dreds of thou­sands in le­gal fees alone it has cost so far.

Alexan­der, who had said he would be host­ing a press con­fer­ence in the near fu­ture to share what­ev­er he can, al­so said, “Be­cause of my voice, there is a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the divers’ deaths at Paria. Be­cause of my voice, peo­ple of every race and class could once again use Wild­flower Park with­out be­ing chased by se­cu­ri­ty guards. Be­cause of my voice, the hand­i­capped have re­served park­ing spaces. Be­cause of my voice, no one dies due to ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents at Gand­hi Vil­lage round­about any more. Pit­bulls no longer maul chil­dren to death and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Act was passed in­to law.”

“I am the voice that etched Akiel Cham­bers and An­drea Bharatt’s names in­to per­ma­nent his­to­ry, so no one for­gets. Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents no longer take hours to get home. Moru­ga got its roads re­paired and up­per Rich Plain got wa­ter for the first time in 62 years. With­out hold­ing pub­lic of­fice, I ‘ve done more for more peo­ple for free than any oth­er politi­cian alive or dead,” Alexan­der added, thank­ing every­one for sup­port.

Al­so among those mov­ing off the scene, blog­ger Rho­da Bharath con­firmed on a re­cent video that it would be the last “live” from her for awhile and she couldn’t say ex­act­ly when she’d be back do­ing a “live”.

She said she’d talk about cer­tain top­ics on that show be­fore she took a hia­tus from so­cial me­dia as she need­ed to take a break and it was “im­por­tant and im­per­a­tive” to take that break.

Bharath was spot­light­ed in Oc­to­ber when found guilty of con­tempt re­gard­ing an Au­gust court or­der that re­strained her from re-pub­lish­ing cer­tain defam­a­to­ry state­ments made against for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.