Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Ra­dio host Tony Lee says he has been asked to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion to re­turn two tick­ets from Caribbean Air­lines to his sta­tion, I95FM, for cov­er­age of the forth­com­ing World Cham­pi­onships in Moscow.Lee said he had de­cid­ed to re­turn the tick­ets af­ter com­ments made by CAL chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan, which sug­gest­ed the state-owned com­pa­ny of­ten sup­plied tick­ets to en­ti­ties, in­di­vid­u­als or na­tion­al teams on re­quest, and I95FM had ben­e­fit­ed from such a re­quest.

Moo­nan had made the com­ment in re­sponse to al­le­ga­tions, re­port­ed in a T&T Guardian ex­clu­sive this week, that CAL vice-chair­man Mo­han Jaikaran had abused his po­si­tion by re­quest­ing 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets for a Moth­er's Day con­cert in New York and Toron­to this week­end, of which he is a co-pro­mot­er.The T&T Guardian learned that act­ing CEO Robert Cor­bie was pres­sured to ap­prove the tick­ets.

Ques­tions were raised about the spon­sor­ship and the ap­par­ent con­flict of in­ter­est, giv­en that Jaikaran is al­so the chair­man of WINTV.But in de­fend­ing the de­ci­sion, Moo­nan said such spon­sor­ship was nor­mal pro­ce­dure by the air­line, once the com­pa­ny deemed it would gain some pro­mo­tion­al ben­e­fit from the arrange­ment. Moo­nan added that CAL of­ten spon­sored na­tion­al team trips and on­ly re­cent­ly ap­proved tick­ets for two I95.5 re­porters to go to Lon­don.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Lee said while the tick­ets were for him­self and sports com­men­ta­tor An­dre Bap­tiste, they were not be­ing spon­sored."It is not like if they are giv­ing us two tick­ets free. In ex­change for the tick­ets we are giv­ing them ad­ver­tis­ing," Lee said.He said the sta­tion made a pro­pos­al to CAL and al­though it was ap­proved, they were on­ly get­ting tick­ets to Lon­don and would have to fund their own way to Moscow.

He said he did not un­der­stand how Moo­nan could seek to link their arrange­ment to the one which Jaikaran was ac­cused of ar­rang­ing."Our pro­pos­al was ap­proved, and there­fore I couldn't con­nect the news­pa­per re­port and I95.5 ap­proval for two tick­ets which are re­al­ly tak­ing us from Port-of-Spain to Lon­don, be­cause we have to get the oth­er, ad­di­tion­al tick­ets from Lon­don to Moscow," Lee said.

"I took strong ob­jec­tion to that, be­cause I saw no link with I95.5's pro­pos­al. I took per­son­al ob­jec­tion to it, be­cause I did not see the need for I95.5 to be iden­ti­fied, as against any oth­er com­pa­ny that may have got­ten tick­ets."Lee said be­cause of Moo­nan's com­ments he had opt­ed not to ac­cept the tick­ets, but the CAL chair­man sub­se­quent­ly asked him to re­con­sid­er his po­si­tion.