The Public Broadcasting Services (PBS)’s refusal to give airtime to Opposition Leader Bernard Grech’s recent statement, calling for Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister Carmelo Abela’s resignation, is unacceptable, the Nationalist Party has said.

In a statement on Wednesday, Grech said that Prime Minister Robert Abela should remove Minister Camelo Abela from Cabinet, after the sitting minister and Labour Deputy Leader Chris Cardona were named in a letter which sees two suspects in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia claiming a conflict of interest.

Abela has also been accused of being involved in a heist on HSBC bank in 2010. Abela has rejected this accusation.

Speaking on Thursday, Nationalist MP David Thake said that PBS’s refusal to give airtime to Grech’s statement breaches the constitutional role the service has to remain impartial to the Government and the Opposition.

The population’s taxes, Thake said, are being used to pay for the Government’s propaganda and continue financing PBS as a “propaganda tool”.

PBS has a responsibility to factually report what is happening in the local political sector, however it is failing to do so, he added.

The only time when the service appears to put the political parties at par is on Sunday, where a fair balance is given to the Prime Minister’s and the Opposition Leader’s weekly addresses, Thake said. This, however, is not enough.

“PBS does not only have an obligation in the weekend”, he said.

Thake was joined by PN Candidate Dorian Sciberras, who reiterated that PBS often ignores the Opposition in its primary news items, which viewers first see when turning on the news.

He added that the population “has a right to know the full truth” and that “truth does not belong to a specific agenda”.

The PN are waiting for PBS to carry its responsibility and address these problems directly, he said.