Gail Alexan­der

Vet­er­an mul­ti-me­dia prac­ti­tion­er Andy John­son is the lat­est me­dia per­son­al­i­ty–along with ra­dio news di­rec­tor Clevon Raphael–to take up a po­si­tion with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In the last eight weeks, the four-month-old ad­min­is­tra­tion has been culling from the top ranks of the me­dia to strength­en its back-up in key min­istries and pub­lic out­reach di­vi­sions. The lat­est two re­cruits, John­son and Raphael, would en­hance the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice re­spec­tive­ly–the back­bone of Gov­ern­ment. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day an­nounced Pow­er 102 News and Cur­rent Af­fairs di­rec­tor Clevon Raphael as his spe­cial ad­vis­er and his "right-hand man". CCN's John­son would be an of­fi­cial part of Gov­ern­ment's del­e­ga­tion, ac­com­pa­ny­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on her US trip to the Unit­ed Na­tions next week.

John­son is tipped to be chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL) which falls with­in Per­sad-Bisses­sar's of­fice, Gov­ern­ment con­firmed yes­ter­day. John­son and Raphael join sev­er­al oth­er for­mer me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers now work­ing with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion. Yes­ter­day, John­son, is­sued a state­ment say­ing: "In re­sponse to queries from col­leagues in the me­dia, I am as of now able to re­port that I have been hold­ing dis­cus­sions with per­sons in the Gov­ern­ment about an of­fer that has been made to me. "We are work­ing out de­tails per­ti­nent to where my ser­vices may be best utilised with­in the state's me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor. "Those dis­cus­sions are as yet in­con­clu­sive and as such it is pre­ma­ture to elab­o­rate.

"Once those dis­cus­sions are fi­nalised, I should be in a po­si­tion to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails." The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that John­son would as­sume du­ties with Gov­ern­ment from next Mon­day when he will be part of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's of­fi­cial Gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tion to the US. She will be ad­dress­ing the UN's Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and un­der­tak­ing oth­er du­ties along with oth­er Cari­com lead­ers dur­ing the ten-day trip. The GISL post which John­son is ex­pect­ed to as­sume is cur­rent­ly held by Max­ie Cuffie. Cuffie once served both at the Guardian and the CCN Group be­fore as­sum­ing the GISL post un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. John­son's jour­nal­is­tic ca­reer be­gan in 1972 at the "Moko" news­pa­per.

He served with the Guardian's now-de­funct sis­ter pa­per "The Evening News." John­son stud­ied in Cana­da re­turn­ing to work at the Ex­press, Ra­dio Trinidad and as Trinidad Guardian ed­i­tor. He has served with CCN for sev­en years, in­clud­ing be­ing Morn­ing Edi­tion host and as a writer. In the 2010-2011 bud­get, a $4 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion was list­ed for a "pro­duc­tion house" in the OPM. This was list­ed as a "new project"

Of­fi­cials at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained yes­ter­day the pro­duc­tion house would be a re­for­mat­ted GISL. Con­cern­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's new spe­cial ad­vis­er, AG Ram­lo­gan an­nounced Raphael's post­ing dur­ing an Eid func­tion at his min­istry yes­ter­day. He con­firmed last Tues­day's ex­clu­sive Guardian re­port that Raphael was tipped for the post.

At yes­ter­day's func­tion, Ram­lo­gan wel­comed Raphael as spe­cial ad­vis­er... "and he will be in ef­fect, be my right hand man," Ram­lo­gan added. Asked why he had cho­sen Raphael, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said: "Mr Raphael is a dis­tin­guished jour­nal­ist and some­one for whom I've had the great­est re­spect. "He has made a tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try and I need­ed some­one with Mr Raphael's skills and abil­i­ty and that's my per­son­al se­lec­tion and choice,"

Ram­lo­gan added: "I think he will add a great val­ue to the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and make a use­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the Gov­ern­ment and coun­try as a whole." Raphael said he start­ed in the me­dia in 1963 as an of­fice boy with the now de­funct Dai­ly Mir­ror news­pa­per. He spent 23 years as a re­porter at the Guardian and al­so worked at oth­er dai­ly.

Raphael be­gins work­ing with Ram­lo­gan from Oc­to­ber 1. He said he would be ad­vis­ing Ram­lo­gan "on a wide range of mat­ters." He al­so will han­dle some as­pect of me­dia mat­ters. On his up­com­ing role, Raphael said: "It's a ma­jor chal­lenge but I see this job as my con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment... just in a dif­fer­ent way. I see it as every­thing I do, I do in the name of my coun­try." John­son and Raphael join for­mer Guardian re­porter Fran­cis Joseph who has been work­ing with Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er as ad­vis­er since Au­gust 1. Al­so, week­ly jour­nal­ist Ken Ali–briefly with the Guardian group un­til last month–han­dled press re­leas­es for the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing Gov­ern­ment's re­cent To­ba­go re­treat. Ali al­so has been tipped for a Gov­ern­ment post.