Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) chair­man Bri­an Stone had been con­tem­plat­ing re­sign­ing since last year due to a "grow­ing" (sic) con­flict of in­ter­ests re­gard­ing his po­si­tion with the State-owned me­dia en­ti­ty and his role as a UNC par­ty ac­tivist. Stone, who re­signed last Fri­day, in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day.

His tenure, just short of a year, had seen the res­ig­na­tions of sev­er­al CN­MG of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Board mem­ber Thokozile James last Oc­to­ber. Stone told the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian: "Since No­vem­ber I had been con­tem­plat­ing re­sign­ing. One of the ma­jor con­tribut­ing fac­tors to my res­ig­na­tion- which is by my choice-is be­cause I be­lieve there's a grow­ing con­flict of in­ter­ests with me be­ing chair­man of a State me­dia com­pa­ny and my com­mit­ment to par­ty ac­tivism.

"I'm a life­long UNC par­ty ac­tivist and since my ap­point­ment at CN­MG, I've got­ten false press re­ports about the sit­u­a­tion and con­cern­ing my as­so­ci­a­tions with my par­ty ac­tivists and gov­ern­ing CN­MG."Stone ad­mit­ted he had been a con­sis­tent pro-UNC blog­ger on the In­ter­net while he was CN­MG chair­man. Since last Sep­tem­ber Stone had al­so been mov­ing to­ward a lec­tur­er's role with the UNC Acad­e­my-a par­ty school to be launched lat­er this year. He de­nied he was asked by UNC of­fi­cials to re­sign, or had been spo­ken to about re­ports of al­leged in­ter­fer­ence at CN­MG.

Pressed on whether any min­is­ter or of­fi­cial spoke to him on it, Stone said: "I'm al­ways in con­ver­sa­tion with my line min­is­ter and I se­lect­ed to build the (UNC) Acad­e­my and UNC ...I chose that role." He, how­ev­er, re­vealed there had been a lot of dis­cus­sion in­ter­nal­ly with his UNC col­leagues about the up­com­ing UNC Acad­e­my and those dis­cus­sions in­volved how he would bal­ance his role with the State me­dia and his de­sire to go fur­ther in­to par­ty ac­tivism. Stone, who is al­so on UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tion team, will be work­ing with UNC's par­ty school, based at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va.