Reign­ing In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch and Road March king Machel Mon­tano in­tends to be a fix­ture on the Car­ni­val 2013 events ros­ter and ex­pects to turn up for all pre-planned sched­uled en­gage­ments. This, even as he awaits a sen­tenc­ing hear­ing sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 17, fol­low­ing a guilty ver­dict hand­ed down by Mag­is­trate Mau­reen Ba­boolal-Gafoor on De­cem­ber 10, 2012, on charges of as­sault and the use of ob­scene lan­guage at the Zen night­club on Keate Street, Port-of-Spain.

"Who say Feb­ru­ary 4? Who say Machel Mon­day?" he asked a ca­pac­i­ty crowd at Fan­ta­sy Car­ni­val's Sav­age Sat­ur­day fete held at Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas, at the week­end. "Now I not telling you who com­ing, but I will be there! Mon­tano said, to screams, cheers and thun­der­ous ap­plause.

Last month, Mon­tano was found guilty of five crim­i­nal of­fences, four of which are charges of as­sault against Ger­ard Bor­win, Bran­dis Browne, Jenelle Lee Chee and Rus­sell Pol­lon­ais.

At the time of the in­ci­dent, Mon­tano was with pro­duc­er/song­writer Ker­nal Roberts, Groovy So­ca Monarch run­ner up, Rod­ney "Ben­jai" LeBlanc and HD Fam­i­ly mem­ber Joel Zan Fevek. Each was charged with in­di­vid­ual of­fences of as­sault but Roberts was the on­ly oth­er de­fen­dant in­volved in the fra­cas to be found guilty.

Wear­ing a white T-shirt with the phrase No Mu­sic, No Life, em­bla­zoned on it, Mon­tano told fans: "They can take away every­thing from me, but they can't take away the mu­sic."