Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Sacked co�host of the morn­ing talk­show – First Up – Fazeer Mo­hammed says the show is now open to po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

Com­ments post­ed on so­cial net­work­ing site Face­book, where C News and First Up each has a page, in­di­cat­ed that Mo­hammed had been fired fol­low­ing an in­ter­view on last Thurs­day's show with For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad�Bisses­sar's state­ments about pro­vid­ing aid to Caribbean coun­tries af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Tomas.

First Up is aired si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly on Chan­nel Six and Talk City 91.1 FM by state-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) and has been host­ed by Mo­hammed and Jessie May Ven­tour since June 2007. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said he hadn't been fired but was "tak­en off the pro­gramme." Mo­hammed, who is a long�stand­ing jour­nal­ist, said he was dis­ap­point­ed by the de­ci­sion. He is await­ing of­fi­cial word from in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ken Ali about his sta­tus. He said: "I was called in on Sat­ur­day to a meet­ing with the hu­man re­sources man­ag­er Chris­tine John­son and was ad­vised that the com­pa­ny had to un­der­go cost cut­ting mea­sures and Andy John­son would re­place me.

"It was ex­plained that Andy will not be of an ad­di­tion­al cost and Gov­ern­ment would be sec­ond­ing his ser­vices from GISL." Dur­ing Thurs­day's in­ter­view Mo­hammed had asked Ram­bachan whether Per­sad�Bisses­sar's state­ments were diplo­mat­ic. Ram­bachan, how­ev­er, di­rect­ed a ques­tion to Mo­hammed and there was an ex­change of com­ments about Mo­hammed's re­li­gious views. Mo­hammed said his re­place­ment had noth­ing to do with what oc­curred on the show. He said: "I have not been dis­missed. I was al­so of­fered oth­er op­tions which were not ac­cept­able to me. It is dis­ap­point­ing to be off the show."

He said he would now ex­plore his op­tions since the me­dia had opened up. Mo­hammed added the pro­gramme's pop­u­lar­i­ty had grown over the years be­cause he and Ven­tour were seen as "di­rect, un­bi­ased, straight­for­ward and re­spect­ed." While he said he had ut­most re­spect for John­son who has been head­ing Gov­ern­ment's In­for­ma­tion Unit, Mo­hammed said: "The show's jour­nal­is­tic in­tegri­ty could be com­pro­mised." Asked if the move was po­lit­i­cal, Mo­hammed said if the rea­son for pulling him off the show was to cut cost, then the ev­i­dence would show. He said it would be wrong for him to spec­u­late oth­er­wise.

What was said

Mo­hammed: "You as the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, would you con­sid­er it diplo­mat­ic to say for ex­am­ple that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not an ATM card for the re­gion or that there must be some way that our lo­cal peo­ple can ben­e­fit? Is that diplo­mat­ic lan­guage?"

Ram­bachan: "You can ar­gue that from now un­til eter­ni­ty and you might want to delve in­to that point... but... I want to ask you a ques­tion. Last time I was here you seemed to have some spe­cif­ic prob­lem with Mrs Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship. Is that so?"

Mo­hammed: "No I don't have a prob­lem with Mrs Per­sad�Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship." (Ram­bachan in­ter­rupts)

Ram­bachan: Philo­soph­i­cal­ly, do you sub­scribe to women in lead­er­ship po­si­tions?"

Mo­hammed: "Well in... re­li­gious­ly no."

Ram­bachan: "Re­li­gious­ly no?"

Mo­hammed: "Yeah."

Ram­bachan: "So that if you'd have a Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad�Bisses­sar as the prime min­is­ter of the coun­try, would you sub­scribe to a woman be­ing the prime min­is­ter of this coun­try?"

Mo­hammed: "I have no prob­lem with that."

Ram­bachan: "But you said re­li­gious­ly you have a prob­lem...

Mo­hammed: "Re­li­gious­ly no but there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween re­li­gion and coun­try... I don't know if you're try­ing to paint me in­to...(in­audi­ble) as far as my re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy...

Ram­bachan: (in­audi­ble)

Mo­hammed: "But Dr Ram­bachan you are try­ing to evade the point... you are try­ing to draw in my re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy on women in lead­er­ship with the lead­er­ship of a coun­try which is very dif­fer­ent and I am try­ing to deal with the fun­da­men­tal is­sue of the com­ments in re­la­tion to the sit­u­a­tion in those is­lands..."

To view full in­ter­view vis­it http://video.ct­nt­world.com/view/460/first-up-on­line-041110/