Derek Achong

Me­dia per­son­al­i­ties Ian Al­leyne and Er­rol Fa­bi­en have agreed to with­draw their ser­vices from Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) while they con­test the St Joseph by-elec­tion on No­vem­ber 4.Fa­bi­en will no longer ap­pear on Vibe CT 105's morn­ing show Mixed Nuts, while CNC 3 stopped air­ing Al­leyne's Crime Watch pro­gramme from last night.

Both men met with se­nior GML man­age­ment at the Trinidad Guardian Build­ing, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, hours af­ter they had filed their nom­i­na­tion pa­pers with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC). In a re­lease yes­ter­day evening, GML man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gabriel Faria said the com­pa­ny's de­ci­sion to ask both men to with­draw was part of the com­pa­ny's pol­i­cy, which is ob­served "scrupu­lous­ly."

"We are en­forc­ing com­pa­ny pol­i­cy that once a GML staff mem­ber, free­lancer or con­trac­tor is ac­tive in elec­toral pol­i­tics, they must with­draw from pro­vid­ing ser­vices," Faria said."The com­pa­ny pol­i­cy is that all our sta­tions–ra­dio and TV–as well as the T&T Guardian, must be po­lit­i­cal­ly neu­tral," he added.

He said while Al­leyne's show was a valu­able re­cent ad­di­tion to CNC3's line­up, there were no ex­cep­tions to the com­pa­ny's pol­i­cy. Faria al­so said that GML wished to "thank both Mr Al­leyne and Mr Fa­bi­en for their in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to its pro­gram­ming and wish them well in their po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions."Al­leyne's show came to CNC3 in April af­ter ri­val tele­vi­sion sta­tion CCN TV6 de­cid­ed not to re­new his con­tract with them.His show was pre­vi­ous­ly aired on cen­tral-based tele­vi­sion sta­tion WIN TV.

In re­cent weeks, the Crime Show host had been in­volved in a pub­lic bust-up with long-time friend and lawyer Om Lal­la, who is al­so con­test­ing the St Joseph seat, and a squab­ble with In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er over the prospect of his run­ning for the PP.

At a pub­lic meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do last month, Warn­er had an­nounced that Al­leyne had been ap­proached by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to ac­cept a post in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Cab­i­net and in par­tic­u­lar the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry post.How­ev­er, Al­leyne sub­se­quent­ly de­nied this claim, say­ing he con­stant­ly spoke to the AG but on­ly in re­la­tion to crime-re­lat­ed mat­ters as he dealt with the dai­ly op­er­a­tions of his pop­u­lar show.

He, how­ev­er, said if of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take up a min­is­te­r­i­al post he would think about it.Sev­er­al calls to Al­leyne's cell­phone yes­ter­day evening went di­rect­ly to voice­mail and he did not re­turn mes­sages. But in an in­ter­view with CNC 3 yes­ter­day im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the meet­ing, Al­leyne in­sist­ed he would re­main with the sta­tion.

Fa­bi­en on hia­tus

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day evening, how­ev­er, Fa­bi­en said he was ini­tial­ly un­aware of the pol­i­cy re­ferred to by Faria."There is a writ­ten pol­i­cy?" Fa­bi­en asked.He said yes­ter­day's meet­ing brought clar­i­ty."My un­der­stand­ing is that I will take a hia­tus un­til the cam­paign is over and then we will meet again," Fa­bi­en said.He an­nounced his de­par­ture from the ra­dio pro­gramme on his Face­book page on Sun­day morn­ing.

"Keep the faith, folks, peo­ple have a right to have pol­i­cy for their op­er­a­tions and to ad­here to them. 105 has been good to me over the years as have I been to 105. I am sad­dened but we all must do what we have to do and I must move from the pave­ment to Par­lia­ment," Fa­bi­en said.

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, who was once a pre­sen­ter of the Morn­ing Pan­chay­at pro­gramme on GML's Sangeet 106.1FM, stepped down in March 2010 af­ter he de­cid­ed to con­test a seat in the gen­er­al elec­tion­When asked af­ter­wards why he stepped down, Ram­bachan de­scribed his de­ci­sion as a "mat­ter of ethics."

Al­leyne and Fa­bi­en's present sit­u­a­tion has been likened to the one faced by for­mer Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Har­ry Par­tap, who was forced to part ways with the Trinidad Ex­press news­pa­pers in 1995 af­ter he was se­lect­ed to con­test a gen­er­al elec­tion.Par­tap held the post of head of that news­pa­per's South Bu­reau be­fore his de­par­ture.

How­ev­er, vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and for­mer Trinidad Ex­press ed­i­tor-in-chief Lennox Grant said yes­ter­day there was a clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween Par­tap's sce­nario and the Al­leyne and Fa­bi­en case."I don't see how the two can be com­pared," Grant said.He said he could not con­sid­er both men as jour­nal­ists, al­though they both work in me­dia hous­es."Al­leyne is a talk show host, show busi­ness per­son and an en­ter­tain­er. His val­ues have nev­er been jour­nal­is­tic.

"Fa­bi­en is not a jour­nal­ist. I tell him some­times he is a lit­er­al jok­er," Grant said.