(Kaieteur News) President Irfaan Ali has failed to release full communications of alleged blackmail attempts towards him and verifiable financial records regarding his private highway farm, opting instead during a Thursday live address to dismiss the brewing controversy as a “sideshow” and a “distraction.”

The broadcast, delivered upon the President’s return from the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting in St. Lucia, directly contradicts previous official assertions that the administration would subject the evidence to independent examination. Despite a statement published by Newsroom explicitly noting that the President was “willing to make them [the text messages and communications] public” for independent scrutiny, Thursday’s live address offered no such disclosure.

Rather than presenting the full text messages, videos, or audio recordings, President Ali only paraphrased a tiny, vague fragment of a text message, quoting the sender, who he says is Nazar Mohamed as saying, “I went through during the election cycle… I refrained from releasing. But if you don’t end, if you don’t end all this madness, I will…”