Controversy over whether ALL MPs invited to Mastana Bahar finale

Keith Rowley was a special guest at last week's Mastana Bahar finals in Penal and media reports quoted organisers as saying that while all MPs were invited to the cultural event the leader of the opposition was the only one who attended.

The leader of the opposition was in the region for walkabouts and meetings, which included a stop at Debe junction to eat doubles with his political colleagues.

Now Senator Devant Maharaj is questioning the accuracy of that statement and suggesting that the organisers of Mastana Bahar are biased in favour of the People's National Movement.

In a media release the Food Production Minister said he never received an invitation to attend the show's Grand Finale at the Rampersad Brothers’ Ranch in San Francique on Thursday. And he called on the organisers and management of the Mastana Bahar programme to explain where is his invitation.

Maharaj said it is "strange" that Rowley was ever present while he and his ministerial colleagues are still waiting for their invitations. He said he has checked with at least four of his Cabinet Colleagues who indicated to him that they never received an invitation to the Grand Finale of Mastana Bahar.

"Mastana Bahar is an independent cultural institution on the landscape of this great Republic, as such it has the right to freedom of association. Senator Maharaj simple wants the organisers of Mastana Bahar to put on public record their preference to the PNM philosophy of discrimination instead of hiding behind veil ambiguity," the release said.

Mastana Bahar started as a cultural programme in the 1970s at the state-owned Trinidad & Tobago Television (ttt) and was produced and presented by the late Sham Mohammed, father of current Information Minister Jamal Mohammed. 

He was a cabinet minister in the Williams PNM and later joined the United National Congress (UNC) and was elected MP for St Joseph. His daughter, Nafeesa, is a member of the PNM; Jamal is a PP cabinet minister and a member of the Congress of the People (COP).

When ttt dropped the show the Mohammed family embraced it as an independent production which now runs on the government information service channel 4 television.