Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Dis­missed co�host of First Up, Fazeer Mo­hammed was "po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timised" for his in­de­pen­dent per­for­mance on State-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG).

This, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers Wes­ley Gib­bings. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Gib­bings said: "I do not think any­one tru­ly be­lieves that Mr Mo­hammed was re­lieved of his du­ties for cost-cut­ting pur­pos­es, as ex­plained to him on Sat­ur­day. "Let's get that out of the way. "Even the more en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of his re­moval are not cit­ing any kind of fi­nan­cial chal­lenge as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the move." Gib­bings echoed the ques­tions by the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) over Mo­hammed's "fir­ing." MATT in a re­lease, de­mand­ed "to know why and at what lev­el the de­ci­sion was tak­en to ter­mi­nate Mr Mo­hammed's em­ploy­ment with the sta­tion."

In a in­ter­view on Mon­day, Mo­hammed said he was not "fired" but "was tak­en off the pro­gramme." CN­MG's in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ken Ali said the move was to fa­cil­i­tate "cost-cut­ting mea­sures." Gib­bings how­ev­er, said: "It is my per­son­al be­lief that Mr Mo­hammed was pun­ished for his line of ques­tion­ing on the is­sue of the Prime Min­is­ter's re­marks con­cern­ing as­sis­tance for Cari­com states fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Tomas. "It is al­so my un­der­stand­ing that a high lev­el of dis­com­fort with his per­for­mance as co�host of the pro­gramme had, in both the re­cent and dis­tant past, been ex­pressed by se­nior politi­cians.

"In oth­er words, Mr Mo­hammed has been po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timised on ac­count of his in­de­pen­dent per­for­mance as a talk show host on the state-owned ra­dio and tele­vi­sion net­work." Mean­while, vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Raoul Pan­tin, who ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in 1975, said he "was to­tal­ly against it." He said he e-mailed Mo­hammed telling him not to wor­ry and re­mind­ed him of his own dis­missal by state-owned Ra­dio 610. "This is ridicu­lous. I think the Prime Min­is­ter has to make a state­ment about this. It is ab­surd."

Pan­tin said jour­nal­ists had to be free to re­port the news and voice their opin­ions since the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lowed free­dom of ex­pres­sion. He added: "The cir­cum­stances here are very sus­pi­cious." Gib­bings al­so hoped Mo­hammed's re­sponse "to an in­ap­pro­pri­ate ques­tion" was not a vi­o­la­tion of free ex­pres­sion or an in­fringe­ment of free­dom of the press with re­spect to the in­de­pen­dent per­for­mance of a me­dia op­er­a­tive.

Sup­port for Fazeer

The de­ci­sion by Ali to re­move Mo­hammed from the talk show which is co-host­ed by Jessie May Ven­tour has sparked con­tention among loy­al First Up fans and oth­er con­cerned cit­i­zens. Sup­port was demon­strat­ed via three pages on so­cial net­work­ing site � Face­book. Jus­tice for Fazeer Mo­hammed, We Sup­port Fazeer Mo­hammed and We Sup­port Fazeer Mo­hammed! We Stand Up for Jus­tice and Free­dom Of Speech are some of the com­ments from up­set and an­gry sup­port­ers. Sev­er­al peo­ple al­so stat­ed they had stopped view­ing the show.