PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Community Development Minister Winston ‘Gypsy’ Peters yesterday announced his resignation as a government minister and launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who is seeking re-election at the head of the coalition People’s Partnership Government.

Peters, who described the prime minister as being “deceitful”, said he could not in “good conscience tell anyone to vote for Kamla Persad-Bissessar in the September 7 General Election”.

“As of today, I have tendered my resignation from the United National Congress (UNC) and I have also tendered my resignation as a government minister, from Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s Cabinet. I have divorced myself from the UNC.”

But Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar told reporters that she wished her former minister all the best in his future endeavours and denied treating Peters, a former calypsonian, badly.

She told reporters it is a “democratic country” and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but she was certain “thousands” would not share Peters’ views.

UNC campaign manager Rodney Charles told the State-owned Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG) that Peters was still a valued member of the coalition Government.

“The prime minister, in her wisdom, would be looking at different candidates, different people, to carry out her vision in the 21st century and, while she did not choose Winston ‘Gypsy’ Peters, he is still a member of our party who we prize, and we will not in any way say anything that is negative about him,” he added.

Peters told a news conference that he had been very supportive of the prime minister over the years and felt hurt after the party had agreed to another person to contest the Mayaro constituency which he was won four times in the last five elections.

He described the prime minister as the “most ungrateful, ingrate, if there was ever one, that I have ever met”, adding that his first inclination that he would not have been selected came when, during the screening process, Prime Minister Persad- Bissessar asked him whether or not he would be angry if he was not selected.

Peters said he responded by saying, “I’d be very angry, as I am today.”

He told reporters that over the past year Persad-Bissessar had been undermining him and that his efforts to meet with her to discuss the situation were not successful.

“The very last act that I committed was to hold her hands (at opening of Carenage Health Centre this week) …to make sure that she didn’t fall when she was going in the car.

“After the event… she still did not speak a word to me about what went on, and when that happened I told myself that I have had enough. In all that has happened I have put Kamla Persad-Bissessar where she is today. I have helped in no small way, whether she wants to acknowledge it or not, and I have helped her all the years that I have been there.

Peters, who was first elected to Parliament in 2000, recalled the role he, along with former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and then former UNC chairman and National Security Minister Austin Jack Warner played in ensuring that Persad-Bissessar was elected leader of the UNC and ultimately prime minister.

In 2009, the three had formed the group “Ramjack” within the UNC, opposing its founder and then leader Basdeo Panday, paving the way for Persad-Bissessar’s eventual election as UNC leader and later as prime minister in 2010.

Warner, who now heads the Independent Liberal Party (ILP), was present during Peters news conference Tuesday, but the former minister said he has had a long friendship with both Warner and PNM leader Dr Keith Rowley.

“The last person I thought was my friend was Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and she is not,” he told reporters.