Richard Lord

In­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at state-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) Ken Ali says he alone took the de­ci­sion to sack talk show host Fazeer Mo­hammed as co-host of the sta­tion's simul­cast First Up. Ali said this dur­ing an in­ter­view at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, af­ter his re­turn to the coun­try. He was part of the Gov­ern­ment's del­e­ga­tion which vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States ear­li­er this week. "This de­ci­sion was tak­en by me, my­self and I...No one else," Ali in­sist­ed when ques­tioned about the sus­pi­cious tim­ing of the de­vel­op­ment, days af­ter a con­tro­ver­sial in­ter­view Mo­hammed had with For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan.

Ali dis­missed claims that his de­ci­sion was an act of re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion against Mo­hammed. Ali, who de­scribed him­self as "the man in the eye of the storm," not­ed that his name was "al­so Is­lam­ic." Ali said: "This is­sue has spun out of con­trol like Hur­ri­cane Tomas and all of this could have been pre-empt­ed if I was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain the facts." He said he had al­ways stood in de­fence of press free­dom, dur­ing his 36 years as a jour­nal­ist. He said he had paid a price "for mak­ing a per­son­al sac­ri­fice for the main­te­nance of the free­dom of the press in T&T." He in­sist­ed that he had no in­ten­tion of in­ter­fer­ing with the day-to-day run­ning of the CN­MG news­room. He said all he want­ed to do was to make the net­work a "lean and mean" net­work.

He said Mo­hammed's re­moval was part of an on­go­ing ex­er­cise to make the sta­tion more com­pet­i­tive in the morn­ing. Ali said Andy John­son, who had re­placed Mo­hammed on the show, was the best man to achieve that ob­jec­tive. Ali said he felt Mo­hammed could have played "a greater role in mat­ters of sport, youth de­vel­op­ment and so on." He added that he was in­ter­est­ed in Mo­hammed work­ing at the net­work in those ar­eas. Ali ques­tioned what would peo­ple say when Chris­tians were af­fect­ed by fur­ther re­struc­tur­ing at the com­pa­ny. He want­ed to know if it would be re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion. He said he felt "dis­ap­point­ed" that his side of the mat­ter was not sought by more jour­nal­ists. Mean­while, Ram­bachan, who al­so spoke at the same news con­fer­ence, said Mo­hammed's re­moval had noth­ing to do with the in­ter­view he had with him last week.

Ram­bachan said it had to do with the re­struc­tur­ing tak­ing place at the tele­vi­sion sta­tion. He said he was "very dis­heart­ened to hear that peo­ple are mak­ing a link be­tween the in­ter­view and the re­al­lo­ca­tion of Mr Mo­hammed." Many peo­ple have been crit­i­cal of Ram­bachan for ques­tion­ing Mo­hammed's re­li­gious be­liefs dur­ing the in­ter­view. But Ram­bachan said yes­ter­day that the in­ter­view was "very pleas­ant." He said the two shook hands at its com­ple­tion. Ram­bachan de­scribed Mo­hammed as "a very re­spect­ed jour­nal­ist and a pro­fes­sion­al in his own right." He said the in­ter­view with Mo­hammed was "very in­tel­li­gent." (RL)