Attorney Robin Montano yesterday resigned as interim Independent Liberal Party (ILP) chairman after four months on the job, citing party errors, decisions taken without reference to the party’s executive and “things” happening in the party which have been of concern to him for “some time.” In his resignation letter to ILP leader Jack Warner, he also took issue with “advisers” whom he said Warner had gathered around him and who were unable to provide the party with not “much more than empty rhetoric.”
Also among his reasons for quitting, Montano, who said ILP is now like all the other parties in T&T, added that he felt he had been “mere window-dressing” for the ILP in the past few months. Montano’s resignation came five days before ILP’s first convention scheduled for Sunday. Montano was announced as interim chairman when the party was launched last July by Warner. He had consistently been a frontline speaker since then and was the party’s Port-of-Spain co-ordinator for 12 candidates in the October 21 local government polls.
When the party lost the local government elections, Montano was the first ILP official to concede defeat. After the ILP also lost the St Joseph by-election, Montano became low –profile within the party and did not attend last week’s executive meeting. Yesterday, Montano sent a resignation letter to Warner around 10 am. He stated: “As you have been aware I have not been happy for some time. I believe that fundamental errors have been made and are continuing to be made and I have not seen any real effort to fix them.”
Montano said although he had voiced those and other concerns to Warner, via an e-mail of October 25, and he had also said at an ILP meeting on October 28 that he felt he was chairman “in name only”, Warner had assured that was not so.
Montano added in the letter: “Unfortunately, there have been no discernible changes and since then decisions were taken without reference either to me or to the executive committee, with the result that I have had no choice but to go along after the fact as not to do so would have caused huge embarrassment to both you as well as to the party.”
He added: “I find it difficult to operate in an environment where I do not have all the facts and am continuously having to defend while being concerned that there might be ‘something around the corner’ about which I know nothing.” Montano said he had joined ILP because he saw a movement for change, “which change I really believed in but plans and hopes have somehow been derailed or diverted and there is little today to distinguish us from the others.”
Montano said: “I’m concerned that those advisers whom you have gathered around you do not really understand this and have to date been unable to provide us with much more than empty academic rhetoric which really do not address the problems of ordinary people. “In these circumstances, I regret to advise that I prefer to withdraw from active politics and accordingly hereby resign as interim chairman of the ILP.”
Contacted yesterday, Montano confirmed the resignation and said he had no regrets about joining ILP. He also said he had not been persuaded by anyone to resign. “I joined for all the right reasons as I really believed it was an opportunity for a moment for change,” he added, declining to elaborate on the “things” he said had happened in the party which prompted his move. Party officials said last evening that Warner had thanked Montano for his services. Warner, however, did not answer calls from the T&T Guardian.
Also contacted yesterday, ILP deputy leader Lyndira Oudit said she was unaware of any resignation. She added that the party’s constitution would be ratified at Sunday’s convention and after that an executive would be elected by members.