The Nationalist Party has protested to the Broadcasting Authority that the Opposition leader's wife was not invited to a programme featuring Mother's Day, in which the wife of the prime minister was a guest.

The programme, Serataron, was transmitted on Friday.

Party general secretary Francis Zammit Dimech said that the constitution (regarding fair broadcasting) had been breached even on an issue on which there should be no political divide. He said the PN is demanding a remedy.

Party spokesman David Thake told a press conference outside the station on Tuesday that PBS was becoming increasingly partisan, and the situation had worsened under Prime minister Robert Abela.

This, he said, was another example of how the institutions were not allowed to operate independently of the government.

PBS was state-funding, and it was therefore unacceptable that it became a political tool in the hands of the government, he argued.