The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is main­tain­ing there was no boy­cott of the in­au­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny for Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

This de­spite the fact that no Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were vis­i­bly present at the in­au­gu­ra­tion, al­though they would have all been in­vit­ed as mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, UNC Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer (PRO), Dr Kirk Meighoo, said he wasn’t aware of any Op­po­si­tion mem­ber at­tend­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion.

How­ev­er, he dou­bled down on a state­ment is­sued by Op­po­si­tion chief whip David Lee over the week­end, which re­ject­ed re­ports that there were plans by the UNC to boy­cott the Pres­i­dent’s in­au­gu­ra­tion.

“There is no man­date or pol­i­cy which pre­vents any UNC par­lia­men­tar­i­an from at­tend­ing Mon­day’s events,” Lee had said in a state­ment.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Meighoo added, “It was not an of­fi­cial boy­cott. We told every­body if they want­ed to at­tend, they could. We be­lieve in democ­ra­cy un­like the PNM, but we’re all of the same mind ap­par­ent­ly. If any of our col­leagues did and we find out lat­er then that’s fine, there’s no pro­hi­bi­tion on at­tend­ing.”

Mean­while, Meighoo al­so re­spond­ed to Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo’s olive branch to those who have raised con­cerns about her as­sum­ing the role.

He said, “What we will do is we will work to en­sure that she ful­fils her role as an in­de­pen­dent check and bal­ance on the Gov­ern­ment and not just a clos­et­ed PNM or a PNM crony and if she sur­pris­es us all and keeps ap­point­ing in­de­pen­dent per­sons, as op­posed to clos­et PNM peo­ple or open­ly PNM peo­ple like she is her­self, if she sur­pris­es us, that would be great and that will be a wel­come step for­ward.

“As it is, we have to see... We will make sure we do every­thing in our pow­er to en­sure that what­ev­er ap­point­ments she makes we scru­ti­nise it and make sure that they are in­de­pen­dent and that these in­sti­tu­tions do not be­come PNM in­sti­tu­tions or se­cret PNM in­sti­tu­tions.”

The UNC re­ject­ed Kan­ga­loo’s nom­i­na­tion in Jan­u­ary due to her fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the rul­ing par­ty. The of­fered Is­rael Khan SC as their choice for pres­i­dent but he lost dur­ing the Elec­toral Col­lege 48-22.