Bo­bie-lee Dixon

The So­ca Monarch show will go on with or with­out Ian "Bun­ji Gar­lin" Al­varez and Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez, says pro­mot­er William Munro. But he said he is per­turbed at the stars pulling out of the show, es­pe­cial­ly since he said he met with Lyons-Al­varez last year to dis­cuss her con­cerns. The news broke on Thurs­day night that the pow­er so­ca cou­ple were with­draw­ing from the com­pe­ti­tions, which are mere weeks away.

Munro said two meet­ings were held last year in June with all artistes ex­cept the two, who did not at­tend, but were in­formed of all the con­cerns by their man­age­ment. The meet­ings, he said, dis­cussed the show and al­so pro­vid­ed a fo­rum for artistes to voice their opin­ions. "I even met with Fay-Ann and her man­ag­er at Hy­att (Ho­tel) be­fore those meet­ings to dis­cuss her re­turn­ing to the event," he said.

"I asked her what she felt need­ed to be im­proved and what she was dis­pleased about. She wrote a let­ter stat­ing her con­cerns, and 95 per cent of it was ad­dressed and im­ple­ment­ed. These same con­cerns were dis­cussed with all oth­er artistes at the meet­ings. "So to come now and say that you are hav­ing is­sues with the con­tract two days be­fore the semi­fi­nals is just mad­ness."

The semi­fi­nals will be held to­mor­row at the Ari­ma Velo­drome, with the fi­nals on Car­ni­val Fri­day (Feb­ru­ary 8) as usu­al. When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Munro yes­ter­day at his of­fice on Prince Street, Port-of-Spain, he de­nied the terms and con­di­tions of the con­tract were un­fair in any way to the artistes, main­tain­ing it was a stan­dard in­dus­try con­tract.

Plac­ing a copy on a ta­ble, Munro said: "Read this con­tract and tell me what is un­fair in that!" He said there was noth­ing in it to sug­gest artistes were sign­ing away their lives. Munro said the five per cent con­tri­bu­tion of the artistes' win­nings does not go to his pock­et but back in­to the Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion to keep it afloat.

"All this talk about Munro mak­ing mon­ey off of the artistes is rub­bish!" he ex­claimed. "Be­sides the five per cent which goes back in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, what oth­er mon­ey is asked of the artistes? "Tell me how they ex­pect the or­gan­i­sa­tion to func­tion. Let the me­dia in­ves­ti­gate and find out from past win­ners if they were ever ap­proached by William Munro for mon­ey. Ask Bun­ji and his wife if I ever yet ap­proach them for even a 25 cents. Some peo­ple just don't like suc­cess."

Munro ex­plained that be­fore 2007/2008, artistes per­formed with­out con­tracts, but they be­came nec­es­sary af­ter sev­er­al were un­will­ing to de­fend their ti­tles, list­ing Ron­nie McIn­tosh, Shad­ow and Kurt Allen. He said this was un­fair to CPF, as heavy mar­ket­ing is done around the show's monarch.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of com­peti­tors be­ing per­mit­ted to per­form on­ly at So­ca Monarch on Car­ni­val Fri­day, Munro said they were well com­pen­sat­ed for this. It was nec­es­sary, he said, giv­ing an ex­am­ple when in 2010 Denise Bel­fon had one of the great­est pre­sen­ta­tions, which land­ed her the sec­ond prize, but on the night she had no voice and could not sing be­cause her voice was strained from per­form­ing at oth­er events. He said Bel­fon has since been in sup­port of the clause.

"As a mat­ter of fact, any in­ter­na­tion­al artiste com­ing to T&T to per­form, it is stip­u­lat­ed in their con­tract that they are for­bid­den to even per­form any­where in T&T three months pri­or to the ac­tu­al event," Munro said. "Look Bri­an McK­night is com­ing for a spe­cif­ic Car­ni­val show. You think he could per­form any­where else?" he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly. He said the show will go on, be­cause it is the "peo­ple's event."

"They must un­der­stand this event is not William Munro's, it's the peo­ple's event. I help pi­lot the project but to get it to the sta­tus at which it is to­day, I have to thank the me­dia, and the pop­u­la­tion through­out the world who sup­port the event. "So I want them to know they are not com­ing up against Munro by do­ing this. They are in fact com­ing up against the peo­ple," he de­clared. He as­sured no oth­er artiste had giv­en any in­di­ca­tion they will fol­low in the foot­steps of the cou­ple.

Bor­row­ing words from ca­lyp­son­ian Leroy "Black Stal­in" Cal­liste, Munro said: "The art form is big­ger than the artiste, there­fore the show must go on."

Bun­ji ex­plains

Their Twit­ter and Face­book pages were on fire as news broke that Bun­ji Gar­lin and Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez had with­drawn from the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions. Fans called on them to re­con­sid­er, while oth­ers sim­ply sup­port­ed the move or ques­tioned why the stance at the "99th hour." There was a feel­ing of de­ja vu, re­call­ing the cou­ple's first de­ci­sion to stay out of the con­test in 2009.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Al­varez as­sured there was no ma­li­cious in­tent, and the move was strict­ly a busi­ness de­ci­sion. "First of all, let me make it abun­dant­ly clear that the com­pe­ti­tion be­longs to CPF (So­ca Monarch pro­mot­ers Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion), and they re­serve the right to place in the con­tract what­ev­er they be­lieve is in the best in­ter­est of the com­pa­ny," said Al­varez.

He said on the oth­er hand, artistes are hu­man be­ings be­fore en­ter­tain­ers and they, too, de­serve the right to agree or dis­agree with the terms and con­di­tions in the con­tract. Al­varez said up to last night he re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls from con­cerned fel­low artistes, who could not un­der­stand why he was once again de­part­ing from the com­pe­ti­tion. He said af­ter he ex­plained why he was not agree­ing to the con­tract, they were shocked that they had over­looked cer­tain claus­es.

Al­varez said he and Lyons-Al­varez had cho­sen not to meet with CPF, to avoid any spec­u­la­tion that they might rene­go­ti­ate. "We re­spect all the artistes enough not to do that. We did not want it to seem like we are go­ing to ne­go­ti­ate some­thing else be­hind their backs. We de­cid­ed we will just re­spect the rules of the com­pe­ti­tion and po­lite­ly with­draw."

On CPF, Al­varez said there was no ill-will be­tween the com­pa­ny and him or his wife. He ex­tend­ed best wish­es to CPF pres­i­dent William Munro and all the artistes par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­pe­ti­tion. Pledg­ing his love to all the dis­ap­point­ed fans, Al­varez said he knew and un­der­stood they were hurt, but al­so knew they un­der­stood why the de­ci­sion was tak­en, and thanked them for their con­tin­ued sup­port.