The Alliance For Change says that state TV NCN has smothered its request for the right to reply to allegations levelled at the party by Presidential Advisor Gail Teixeira and Attorney General Anil Nandall on October 11th during the Agricola protests.
As such, the AFC said it will take to the private media to rebut the allegations made.
Minus address, salutation and signature, the NCN letter reads “I acknowledge receipt of your letter\ dated October 12, 2012. Should you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.”
Party leader Khemraj Ramjattan yesterday voiced concern. “We view this acknowledgement letter as a denial since it failed to address the issues outlined in our letter. Therefore the Alliance For Change has no other recourse but to proceed to get our response played on private stations”, he said.
“The Alliance For Change has seen these outrageous allegations being played constantly on NCN. It totalled over 27 hours and yet when we wrote to ask to reply using the same broadcast medium as the two we are not given even five minutes” he added.
In the letter written to NCN’s acting Chief Executive Officer, Michael Gordon the AFC stated that the party “notes with some degree of concern” the airings of a programme in which the Attorney General and Teixeira levelled accusations at AFC Chairman Nigel Hughes and Vice Chair Moses Nagamotoo.
“We have noted that the programme was first broadcast on NCN channel 11 on the evening of October 11, 2012 at around 21:00 hours with subsequent rebroadcast.
“In keeping with general principles employed by most media outlets and in accordance with standard acceptable journalistic principles, the Alliance For Change calls on NCN Inc to provide AFC the ‘Right to Reply’ to these allegations” the letter stated.
The Party had also asked that the opportunity to reply be allowed in a timely manner keeping with “general acceptable journalistic principles”.
Ramjattan said his party feels that the refusal of a reply to the accusations is unbalanced and a form of “thievery from the state”.
