Sources with­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress have re­vealed that a close fe­male rel­a­tive of the Op­po­si­tion Leader and not her com­mu­ni­ca­tions team that is to blame for the pla­gia­rised con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage post­ed to her Face­book ac­count last Sat­ur­day.

Guardian Me­dia learned that the rel­a­tive who made the mis­take is not with­in the for­mal ranks of the UNC but has full ad­min­is­tra­tive rights for the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s of­fi­cial Face­book page.

The in­for­ma­tion we re­ceived came just a few hours af­ter the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team pur­port­ed­ly apol­o­gised to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar via that same Face­book page.

In the state­ment, the team said: “In our haste to post a con­grat­u­la­to­ry note to the Pres­i­dent-elect Biden, we used ma­te­r­i­al from the mes­sage is­sued by the British Labour Par­ty.”

The state­ment went on to say that “To those who read the mes­sage and to our Leader, we of­fer our deep­est and most sin­cere apol­o­gy and we ac­cept full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this crit­i­cal er­ror.”

But Guardian Me­dia was told the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team did not write that post and was, in fact, tak­en aback when they saw it on Face­book.

And that’s be­cause we un­der­stand they had min­i­mal in­put in the orig­i­nal mes­sage that was post­ed on Sat­ur­day.

Guardian Me­dia was told that a close fe­male rel­a­tive of the Op­po­si­tion Leader has con­trol of the Face­book page with full ad­min­is­tra­tive rights.

We were told that this fe­male rel­a­tive would usu­al­ly draft the mes­sages that are post­ed from this page and for­ward them to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team to vet for gram­mar and spelling.

How­ev­er, in the case of Sat­ur­day’s mes­sage, we un­der­stand that no­body on the team thought to check for pla­gia­rism.

The source told us that UNC staff and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment are not even sure if Per­sad-Bisses­sar her­self was aware of the post go­ing out.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that some­times the fe­male rel­a­tive would by­pass the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team al­to­geth­er and post to the page af­ter on­ly li­ais­ing di­rect­ly with MP’s close to the leader.

Mean­while, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team has been re­ceiv­ing pub­lic crit­i­cism in light of the apol­o­gy.

“If you, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Team ac­cepts re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, then do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly,” one Face­book user said.

“Mis­take? Se­ri­ous­ly? More like an at­tempt to sab­o­tage the Op­po­si­tion Leader!” an­oth­er poster said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Per­sad-Bisses­sar to con­firm or de­ny the al­le­ga­tion of her rel­a­tive’s in­volve­ment and to ask what changes will be/have been made to pre­vent a re­cur­rence.

We re­ceived no re­sponse.

On Oc­to­ber 30, Vas­ant Bharath who is vy­ing for the posit­ing of Po­lit­i­cal Leader in the De­cem­ber 6 in­ter­nal elec­tions de­scribed the par­ty as be­ing in “com­plete dis­ar­ray.”