Joshua Seemu­n­gal

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

With Car­ni­val less than a month away, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) Dune Ali is rais­ing con­cerns about the tenure of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s cur­rent pres­i­dent, Mark Ayen.

Ali, who in­cor­po­rat­ed the TTC­BA as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion in Jan­u­ary 2013, is of the view that Ayen was il­le­gal­ly elect­ed at an An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in No­vem­ber 2025.

Ali al­leges Ayen’s ap­point­ment is the lat­est episode of al­leged dic­ta­to­r­i­al be­hav­iour by the as­so­ci­a­tion’s board over the last five years.

“Mr Ayen has thus far re­fused to step down, cit­ing that an ear­li­er prece­dent was set al­low­ing an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber to be se­lect­ed and not elect­ed. He has not pro­vid­ed, thus far, any rul­ing re­gard­ing this prece­dent, nor the at­tor­ney who gave the opin­ion,” Ali said.

Sec­tion 8.3 of the TTC­BA’s bye-laws states that “... all elect­ed mem­bers shall hold of­fice for a term of two years and shall be el­i­gi­ble for re-elec­tion up to a max­i­mum of two con­sec­u­tive terms.”

In No­vem­ber 2020, Ayen was first elect­ed as a di­rec­tor.

“Based on the plans ahead for the TTC­BA, Mrs (Ros­alind) Gabriel (a di­rec­tor) said it was nec­es­sary to ap­point a PR Of­fi­cer in the per­son of Mark Ayen. Mrs Gabriel point­ed out that Mr Ayen had been act­ing in that role since the elec­tion of the present board in 2020. She not­ed it is not a po­si­tion that is in the by-laws; how­ev­er, with the agree­ment of the board, it’s an im­por­tant po­si­tion in or­der to keep the im­age and news of what the as­so­ci­a­tion is all about,” a March 2021 up­date to mem­bers stat­ed.

In May 2023, Ayen was elect­ed as TTC­BA Pres­i­dent.

“The TTC­BA has ap­point­ed a new board of di­rec­tors fol­low­ing the elec­tions held on May 5, 2023, at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. Mr Mark Ayen was elect­ed as Pres­i­dent with unan­i­mous sup­port.

“Mr Ayen and his new­ly-elect­ed board bring over 75 years of com­bined in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence to the ta­ble with a man­date to bring the car­ni­val fra­ter­ni­ty to meet the in­dus­try’s con­tem­po­rary needs. Ayen is the cur­rent band­leader of Dirty Medics Car­ni­val Group and has pre­vi­ous­ly served as Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer,” a TTC­BA re­lease stat­ed.

He was then re-elect­ed on No­vem­ber 25.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment by Guardian Me­dia, Ayen de­nied break­ing any by-laws, ac­cus­ing Ali of mak­ing un­found­ed ac­cu­sa­tions.

“It is some­thing that we have to get over the rhetoric. That is some­thing that was ad­dressed in our An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing when the mem­bers vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly for me for the post of pres­i­dent to con­tin­ue from my last term. I don’t think we have to sug­gest that sit­u­a­tion again.

“If Mr Ali is an at­tor­ney at law, then he knows what he has to do, but it’s quite clear in the by-laws, and again, how­ev­er he in­ter­prets it, that’s up to him, but as I said, it was ad­dressed be­fore, and it is not some­thing the ex­ec­u­tive is look­ing to ad­dress again,” he said.

Ali seeks Govt’s in­ter­ven­tion

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, Ayen’s de­fence of the le­gal­i­ty of serv­ing three con­sec­u­tive terms was based on a prece­dent set by for­mer pres­i­dent Ros­alind Gabriel, who served as a di­rec­tor for four con­sec­u­tive terms.

Ali said Ayen’s le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tion is in­cor­rect, as ad­vised by two se­nior coun­sels. He did not pro­vide the name of the lawyers or share the ad­vice with Guardian Me­dia for in­de­pen­dent re­view.

Ali has sought Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ven­tion, writ­ing to the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Michelle Ben­jamin, on Ju­ly 15, 2025.

“As it stands, the en­tire ex­ec­u­tive of the TTC­BA was il­le­gal­ly elect­ed in con­tra­ven­tion of both the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as the by-laws of the TTC­BA it­self.

“This presents a prob­lem at two lev­els. First, it means that an il­le­gal­ly ap­point­ed in­di­vid­ual will have in­flu­ence over the al­lo­ca­tion of State funds as a sit­ting mem­ber of the NCC Board. Sec­ond, an il­le­gal ap­point­ment is like­ly to not serve the best in­ter­ests of Car­ni­val bands, mas­quer­aders and the wider Car­ni­val as a cul­tur­al en­deav­our of na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance,” he wrote.

In an email re­sponse, his let­ter was ac­knowl­edged and re­ceived by the min­is­ter’s sec­re­tari­at, and was said to be un­der re­view.

How­ev­er, he said, he has not re­ceived a fur­ther re­sponse.

At­tempts to get a com­ment from the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Michelle Ben­jamin, were un­suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, for­mer min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell said he was made aware of the is­sue in 2023.

“I sought le­gal ad­vice from the min­istry’s le­gal de­part­ment and con­sid­ered the ad­vice pro­vid­ed by the TTC­BA and sat­is­fied my­self that no un­law­ful­ness arose as the for­mer pres­i­dent’s elec­tion did not con­tra­vene the TTC­BA bye-laws ap­plic­a­ble to the po­si­tion on an ex­am­i­na­tion of By-Law 8.3 and 15.3.

As a con­se­quence, for­mer pres­i­dent Ros­alind Gabriel was re-ap­point­ed to the board of the NCC pur­suant to sec­tion 5(1)(b) of the NCC Act.

“The TTC­BA is a pri­vate, in­de­pen­dent non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion and op­er­ates au­tonomous­ly, free from gov­ern­ment con­trol, man­age­ment, or in­ter­fer­ence in its af­fairs. The ob­jec­tion re­lat­ing to the le­gal­i­ty of the tenure of the for­mer pres­i­dent be­came rel­e­vant to my de­ci­sion to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tion of the TTC­BA pur­suant to sec­tion 5(1)(b),” he told Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day.

The TTC­BA, which re­ceived more than $12.3 mil­lion in state fund­ing via sub­ven­tions from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) be­tween 2022 and 2024, is re­spon­si­ble for plan­ning and ex­e­cut­ing pro­grammes and ac­tiv­i­ties for stag­ing and de­vel­op­ment of Car­ni­val.

For ex­am­ple, it is re­spon­si­ble for the Car­ni­val band of the year awards, con­trol­ling judg­ing and de­cid­ing the rules.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s 2024 au­dit­ed state­ments, pre­pared by L Dook­iesingh and Com­pa­ny, the TTCB’s sub­ven­tion from the NCC in­creased by 3740 per cent from 2023 (273,370) to 2024 ($10,496,607).

The ex­pen­di­ture on event costs in­creased by 2809 per cent from 2023 ($325,000) to 2024 ($9,454,732).

Around $6.9 mil­lion of the 2024 event ex­pen­di­ture was for Trinidad Car­ni­val prizes.

The oth­er di­rec­tors ap­point­ed at the meet­ing were: Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, Stef­fano Mar­cano, Col­in Prov­i­dence, Rawle Phillip, Tia-Maria Suther­land, Aneshia Beach, Var­ma Leo Lakhan and Joanne Thomp­son.

Court mat­ter in­volv­ing

Ros­alind Gabriel

Ali and two oth­er mem­bers, Jacque­line Burgess and Ger­ard Weekes (de­ceased), and for­mer TTC­BA pres­i­dent Ros­alind Gabriel cur­rent­ly have a sep­a­rate mat­ter be­fore the courts, with the three claimants ac­cus­ing Gabriel of, among oth­er things, act­ing il­le­gal­ly in the po­si­tion of TTC­BA di­rec­tor by serv­ing more than two con­sec­u­tive terms.

In the court doc­u­ments, they ac­cused the board of un­law­ful­ly de­ter­min­ing dates for An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ings, un­law­ful­ly re­mov­ing the claimants from the board and host­ing an un­law­ful elec­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Gabriel told Guardian Me­dia: “The mat­ter is be­fore the Court, and there­fore I do not want to break the sub ju­dice rule, but I de­ny that I broke the TTC­BA’s by-laws.”

Ac­cord­ing to her at­tor­neys’ le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of clause 8.3, which states that an of­fi­cer is el­i­gi­ble for re-elec­tion up to a max­i­mum of two con­sec­u­tive terms, “Re-elec­tion” is de­fined as “the process of elect­ing some­body again to the same po­si­tion.”

Based on that de­f­i­n­i­tion, her at­tor­neys be­lieved that the ex­press and de­lib­er­ate use of that word in the by-law sig­ni­fies an in­tent to on­ly re­strict the max­i­mum tenure to a par­tic­u­lar of­fice, rather than any di­rec­tor­ship role.

Gabriel added that both she and TTC­BA hold two out­stand­ing and un­set­tled cost or­ders against Ali, to­talling $11,916.