Dominica’s Opposition Leader, Lennox Linton, said infighting within the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP) had served to prevent the party from getting into the corridors of power, especially during his tenure as a political leader.
“I stepped up to the responsibility of political leadership in response to the need for change. I served in the responsibility of political leadership, on the agenda for change. I have stepped down from the responsibility of political leadership in the embrace of change,” said Linton, who announced his resignation as UWP leader over the weekend.
In a Facebook statement, Linton, who had been at the helm of the party since 2013, leading it to two electoral defeats, said “a house divided under itself cannot stand and it is in the balance between democratic freedoms and the discipline for collective leadership responsibility that eludes us from time to time.”
In 1995, the centrist political party, which was formed in 1968, secured a narrow majority of 11 seats in the 21-seat Parliament but lost the 2000 general election when it won nine seats.
Linton said while he believes that the opposition’s quest to remove the ruling Dominica Labour Party (DLP) from office has been unsuccessful due to an uneven playing field, betrayal within his own party led to its defeat at the polls.
“And yes, there has been the infighting, the vilification from within, the backstabbing and the treachery, but I’m alive, I survived to stand aside, to continue to serve, committed to secure a course correction so that the leadership of the party going forward is protected from similar impediments to ensuring that Dominica is on the ballot, and not the parties and interests we define in mindless prejudice, of colors. It’s time for a change.”
Linton, a former journalist, said his resignation as UWP leader emerged from the national yearning for change “that is a must.
“For real change that people, especially the youth can believe in,” he said, adding that his relationship with the party was never “till death do us part.”
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