Ke­jan Haynes

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress shared a re­lease from the TT Fire Ser­vice claim­ing its Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence ral­ly last night drew such large crowds that it ex­ceed­ed the venue’s ca­pac­i­ty, but it was not an au­then­tic doc­u­ment.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son, he sim­ply replied, “That is not au­then­tic.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who be­gan look­ing in­to its au­then­tic­i­ty as well. He too said he was as­sured by the Fire Ser­vice that no one from their de­part­ment had sent out that re­lease.

The TTFS did even­tu­al­ly send out a state­ment to the me­dia say­ing, “The Chief Fire Of­fi­cer would like to in­form the pub­lic that the press re­lease sent out bear­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice let­ter­head with the sub­ject mat­ter ‘Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Event’ was ma­li­cious in na­ture and er­ro­neous. At no time dur­ing the event, which was held to­day at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence Ma­coya, were the or­ga­niz­ers ad­vised to close the doors for any rea­son.”

The in­au­then­tic re­lease had read, “The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice wish­es to ad­vise that at 6pm to­day, the UNC na­tion­al event be­ing held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence was ad­vised to close its doors to pa­trons, as it had ex­ceed­ed its max ca­pac­i­ty and pa­trons were still ar­riv­ing at the venue.”

The UNC’s Face­book page shared it with the cap­tion:

“To the thou­sands that were un­able to gain ac­cess to the venue for the launch of our can­di­dates, due to hav­ing reached max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty, we sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise and thank you for your over­whelm­ing sup­port. We al­so wish to thank the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices for their kind co­op­er­a­tion.”

There were sev­er­al glar­ing is­sues with the re­lease. For one, it was not shared with the me­dia through any of­fi­cial chan­nels, nor on its own so­cial me­dia chan­nels.

The font and for­mat al­so did not match pre­vi­ous re­leas­es sent from the TTFS.

Short­ly af­ter, the UNC delet­ed the post with the pic­ture of the re­lease but kept the cap­tion. The par­ty has not is­sued a state­ment on the in­ci­dent.