Political defections debate rekindled after Roberts switch

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer PNM of­fi­cer Dane Wil­son be­lieves both Siparia Al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts and Diego Mar­tin Al­der­man Paul Na­hous — who switched from the NTA to the UNC in 2025 — should re­sign from their po­si­tions af­ter chang­ing their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance.

Wil­son, a for­mer Male Youth Of­fi­cer from 2008 to 2011, said in a state­ment that the re­al is­sue in the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Al­der­man Vic­tor Roberts’ shift­ing al­le­giance from the UNC to the PNM was the in­con­sis­ten­cy in how such moves are judged de­pend­ing on who ben­e­fits.

Not­ing the UNC’s calls for Roberts to re­sign fol­low­ing his move, Wil­son said the re­ac­tion was dif­fer­ent when Na­hous aligned with the UNC and re­signed from the NTA in 2025.

Wil­son not­ed that NTA Po­lit­i­cal Leader Gary Grif­fith had called on Na­hous to re­sign on eth­i­cal grounds, since his post was se­cured through the NTA. How­ev­er, Na­hous ar­gued that legal­ly the po­si­tion be­longed to him and not the NTA, and that there was no law re­quir­ing him to re­sign.

Wil­son said that when Na­hous switched par­ties there was lit­tle sus­tained out­rage “from many of those who now speak most loud­ly about po­lit­i­cal in­tegri­ty.”

“Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen is in­sist­ing Al­der­man Roberts should re­sign while seem­ing­ly ig­nor­ing that she and the UNC de­fend­ed Al­der­man Na­hous leav­ing the NTA for the UNC,” Wil­son said.

“Min­is­ter Ameen has al­so placed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to en­sure Roberts re­signs as Al­der­man be­fore ful­ly em­brac­ing him po­lit­i­cal­ly. Why hasn’t Ameen made a sim­i­lar re­quest to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing Al­der­man Na­hous?”

Wil­son said many peo­ple would sup­port re­view­ing the law to ad­dress po­lit­i­cal de­fec­tions. How­ev­er, he ar­gued that re­form must be guid­ed by con­sis­ten­cy, ethics and prin­ci­ple — not ac­cord­ing to which side ben­e­fits at a giv­en mo­ment.

“If Al­der­man Roberts is be­ing judged on the ba­sis that re­tain­ing his po­si­tion af­ter de­fec­tion is un­ac­cept­able, then the same stan­dard should have ap­plied re­gard­ing Al­der­man Na­hous. If Al­der­man Na­hous was jus­ti­fied in re­tain­ing his po­si­tion be­cause the law al­lows it, then the same rea­son­ing must log­i­cal­ly ap­ply to Al­der­man Roberts.”

Wil­son said that while politi­cians of­ten ar­gue pol­i­tics has its own moral­i­ty, that can­not shield in­con­sis­ten­cy.

Cit­ing for­mer South African Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela’s be­lief that any­one who changes prin­ci­ples de­pend­ing on whom they are deal­ing with can­not lead a na­tion, Wil­son added:

“This is the mo­ment for right-think­ing mem­bers in all par­ties, es­pe­cial­ly with­in the PNM, to demon­strate their moral com­pass is not con­di­tion­al.

“Con­sis­ten­cy would de­mand the same con­clu­sion in both cas­es — that Al­der­man Na­hous and Al­der­man Roberts should both re­sign from the po­si­tions they un­eth­i­cal­ly con­tin­ue to hold in their re­spec­tive cor­po­ra­tions af­ter chang­ing po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance. If de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­tegri­ty is im­por­tant, it must be ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly, not se­lec­tive­ly.”

PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s query on Wil­son’s views. Ameen al­so did not re­spond, while Na­hous and Roberts did not re­ply to re­quests for com­ment.

Roberts said last week that while he had no ob­jec­tion to laws be­ing changed to al­low par­ties to re­voke ap­point­ments in po­si­tions like his, un­der the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion he had no in­ten­tion of re­sign­ing.

Grif­fith said politi­cians, an­a­lysts and oth­ers had now sud­den­ly at­tained “new­found wis­dom” in de­mand­ing that the law be changed to al­low the re­moval or re­place­ment of an al­der­man who re­signs from the par­ty that se­lect­ed them.

“They’ve al­so stat­ed that, in the mean­time, if any al­der­man has an ounce of in­tegri­ty, he should re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly if he no longer rep­re­sents the par­ty that se­lect­ed him. I stat­ed this over a year ago and was ig­nored by the same in­di­vid­u­als now crit­i­cal of this flawed law,” Grif­fith said.

“This should have been amend­ed years ago. How­ev­er, it’s amaz­ing such con­cerns and wis­dom didn’t ex­ist in 2025, when Na­hous did the ex­act same thing. Why is it that on­ly when it af­fects some peo­ple that they sud­den­ly gain this wis­dom?”