The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is call­ing for an apol­o­gy from the board of di­rec­tors at Trinidad & To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) and an ex­pla­na­tion for the han­dling of its po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ap­pear­ance at the Di­vali Na­gar on Sat­ur­day night.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the an­nu­al event held by the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for In­di­an Cul­ture in Ch­agua­nas, where TTT serves as a broad­cast­ing part­ner. How­ev­er, the cov­er­age shift­ed away from the event when Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­rived in the seat­ing area, on­ly re­sum­ing af­ter her speech was con­clud­ed, the UNC claimed yes­ter­day.

In a let­ter ad­dressed to TTT, UNC chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo re­quest­ed that the State broad­cast­er air Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s full ad­dress be­fore Di­vali, com­plete with ap­pro­pri­ate ad­ver­tis­ing and no­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Tan­coo not­ed there were no tech­ni­cal is­sues on pre­vi­ous days of the event, nor with any oth­er speak­er.

“I am cer­tain that you will agree that the cir­cum­stances pro­voke ex­treme sus­pi­cion from many. This year, the NCIC Di­vali Na­gar was ad­dressed by oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives with ab­solute­ly no tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. It is high­ly provoca­tive that the en­tire pres­ence of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, who is the ninth high­est ranked State of­fi­cial on the Ta­ble of Prece­dence of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the on­ly Hin­du fe­male po­lit­i­cal leader, was com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ed by the gov­ern­ment-run me­dia house,” Tan­coo said.

He re­mind­ed TTT’s man­age­ment of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to main­tain in­de­pen­dence and trans­paren­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the broad­cast part­ner for the NCIC Di­vali Na­gar, a stan­dard man­dat­ed for all tax­pay­er-fund­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions. He stressed that falling short of this oblig­a­tion was un­ac­cept­able.

The UNC al­so ac­knowl­edged that TTT op­er­ates un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter but em­pha­sised that it still has a le­gal du­ty to the pub­lic.

“The coun­try de­serves a pub­lic apol­o­gy, not from an anony­mous post on an on­line page or a face­less tick­er tape mes­sage, but from one of the sev­er­al mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors or se­nior man­agers of TTT, paid by the same tax­pay­ers who were de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see and hear the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion speak at this na­tion­al re­li­gious func­tion. More­over, the coun­try should be ad­vised of what oc­curred, how it hap­pened and who is be­ing held li­able,” Tan­coo said.