Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul has de­ferred all com­ments on the sack­ing of vlog­ger and com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant Rho­da Bharath to his pre­de­ces­sor Colm Im­bert.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Dhan­paul told Guardian Me­dia that all ques­tions in re­la­tion to that mat­ter must be posed to Im­bert. 

“Please di­rect all ques­tions on Ms Bharath to Min­is­ter Im­bert,” he said. 

Calls and mes­sages to Im­bert went unan­swered yes­ter­day. 

Al­so con­tact­ed, the so­cial me­dia vlog­ger and com­mu­ni­ca­tions lec­tur­er told Guardian Me­dia she had noth­ing to tell the me­dia about her tenure with the Min­istry of Fi­nance. 

Bharath, who, through her com­pa­ny, Type 1 Me­dia and Re­search So­lu­tions, was a com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant earn­ing a month­ly fee of $30,000 at the min­istry, re­vealed she was fired in a so­cial me­dia video ear­li­er this week. 

When con­tact­ed Bharath said: “I have no com­ment to make to the me­dia about my em­ploy­ment at the Min­istry of Fi­nance.” 

Short­ly af­ter the call, Bharath post­ed on so­cial me­dia a screen­shot of this re­porter’s name from her call log, with the cap­tion: “Around 1 pm to­day the me­dia called me for com­ment on my re­la­tion­ship with the MoF. I de­clined to make any com­ment what­so­ev­er. But ex­pect a sto­ry from whichev­er me­dia house this re­porter is with.” 

Bharath shot in­to promi­nence in 2016, break­ing the sto­ry of then pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona ac­quir­ing wine bear­ing the pres­i­den­tial seal. At the time, it was seen as a mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds. The in­tense pres­sure forced Car­mona to hold a press con­fer­ence (al­most un­heard of by a Pres­i­dent) to re­spond to the ac­cu­sa­tions, which he de­nied.   

Since then, Bharath has gar­nered a fol­low­ing of thou­sands through her Face­book page, which at the time of pub­lish­ing, has over 35,000 likes.   

Bharath has of­ten used her plat­form to break sto­ries and leak doc­u­ments, lead­ing many to pro­claim her as a jour­nal­ist.  

She has al­so of­ten used that plat­form to crit­i­cise the work of jour­nal­ists ex­ten­sive­ly on her Face­book Live broad­casts. 

—Jensen La Vende