In­nis Fran­cis

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), led by chair­man An­si­ley King, yes­ter­day met with some mem­bers of the South/Cen­tral ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty at the San Fer­nan­do Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre to ad­dress re­cent griev­ances with­in the zone.

On Au­gust 9, an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing was called by an arm of the ex­ec­u­tive, which King deemed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. He said that Steve "Ras Kom­man­da" Pas­call re­mains the sit­ting chair­man of the South/Cen­tral Zone.

King said mem­bers were "delu­sion­al" and mis­treat­ed in the way they han­dled gov­ern­ing body af­fairs.

He said they have su­per­seded their po­si­tions and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly dis­re­gard­ed the laws that gov­ern the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

In the meet­ing held on Au­gust 9, led by TU­CO South/Cen­tral vice-chair­man Vic­to­ria "Queen Vic­to­ria" Coop­er-Rahim, she chaired the meet­ing and raised three points: no con­fi­dence in Pas­call for mis­han­dling of a pack­age; to set a date for elec­tions of the South/Cen­tral Zone and to se­lect a re­turn­ing of­fi­cer. No one from the op­pos­ing slate at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

New de­vel­op­ments shared by Sec­re­tary of South/Cen­tral Zone Mc Mor­ris Ed­wards said on Fri­day they were no­ti­fied that the nom­i­na­tion box was miss­ing and a re­port was made to the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice and the San Fer­nan­do CID.

He said a re­quest was al­so made to ac­cess the CCTV cam­era in the area to as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

How­ev­er, pleas were made to press charges against wrong­do­ers and to bring the mat­ter be­fore the courts, and to set a new elec­tion date.

King said, "We chose to keep our busi­ness out of the pub­lic be­cause there are peo­ple who are try­ing to dam­age the or­gan­i­sa­tion...we have to find some­way for­ward, at present we have two dates it was very se­ri­ous be­cause we have two dates; the 29 of Au­gust and the 13 of Sep­tem­ber, that those date at the dates for elec­tions in the South/Cen­tral Zone and we can­not have two dates. But we recog­nise the date that was pre­sent­ed by the chair­man, Au­gust 29, and we want to make that clear that this is the date that we are go­ing to recog­nise, and we hope that some lev­el of un­der­stand­ing and rea­son­ing can pre­vail...the last thing we want to ex­pe­ri­ence is chaos in the South/Cen­tral Zone."

Mem­bers be­came crit­i­cal that King stands res­olute in his de­ci­sion and called for the meet­ing to be for­feit­ed giv­en the new de­vel­op­ments of the miss­ing nom­i­na­tion box.

Many oth­ers shared griev­ances and dis­crep­an­cies with­in the con­sti­tu­tion, which was amend­ed sev­er­al times, in­clud­ing prac­tice and prece­dent, lack of trans­paren­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, clar­i­ty of a seed­ed ca­lyp­son­ian, and whether the vote of no con­fi­dence was wrong and how to fix the process.

Some stal­warts at­tend­ing the meet­ing in­clud­ed for­mer TU­CO chair­man Win­ston Pe­ters, Dr Rev­erend Michael "Pro­tec­tor" Leg­erton, Mar­sha Clifton, Curlis­sa Charles-Mapp, Tamei­ka Dar­ius, Sel­wyn "Broth­er J James, Ban­jela, and Ri­val­do Lon­don. At­tor­ney San­jiv Sookoo was al­so at the meet­ing to as­sist the mem­bers with con­sti­tu­tion­al in­for­ma­tion.