Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), Ains­ley King, has dis­missed con­cerns raised by two mem­bers as part of a smear cam­paign ahead of next year’s elec­tions.

King told Guardian Me­dia that the is­sues raised by ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Er­rol “Bal­ly” Bal­lan­tyne and Roger “Body­guard” Mo­hammed are in­ter­nal mat­ters that should have been ad­dressed with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at Kaiso Blues, Wright­son Road, yes­ter­day, Bal­lan­tyne and Mo­hammed called on Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin to in­ter­vene and ini­ti­ate a foren­sic au­dit. They re­it­er­at­ed con­cerns over ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers al­leged­ly be­ing paid hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars for not per­form­ing in this year’s ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions.

“We in­tend to con­duct our au­dit as well. We al­ready have some­one on stand­by, an au­di­tor to as­sist us with our au­dit in the event that the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter does not ac­cede to our re­quest,” Mo­hammed said.

He al­so de­nied that his ac­tions are linked to the up­com­ing elec­tions and added that if any mem­bers are found to have act­ed im­prop­er­ly, they should re­sign.

Ac­cord­ing to Bal­lan­tyne and Mo­hammed, King paid him­self $350,000 for rent re­im­burse­ment in Trinidad and an ad­di­tion­al $100,000 for un­spec­i­fied work. Vice-pres­i­dent Steve “Ras Kom­man­der” Pas­cal and trea­sur­er Judy Beni­court re­port­ed­ly each re­ceived $100,000 for not com­pet­ing in com­pe­ti­tions, while as­sis­tant trea­sur­er Melis­sa Williams-Camp­bell re­ceived $60,000.

The men al­so raised con­cerns over TU­CO’s of­fice re­lo­ca­tion from Bel­mont to Wood­brook and oth­er de­ci­sions they con­sid­ered uni­lat­er­al. They not­ed that a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest re­gard­ing the pay­ments was post­poned to Sep­tem­ber 18 af­ter the orig­i­nal Sep­tem­ber 1 dead­line passed.

In re­sponse, King said all de­ci­sions were made in his ca­pac­i­ty as head of TU­CO and in the best in­ter­est of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s more than 600 mem­bers. He added that he main­tains an open-door pol­i­cy, but the mem­bers chose to take their griev­ances pub­lic in­stead of meet­ing with him.

Bal­lan­tyne ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the or­gan­i­sa­tion, say­ing it has lost its fo­cus.

“Our watch­words were tak­ing ut­most care of our own TU­CO. But it’s changed to tak­ing ut­most care of them­selves, plain and sim­ple. The mem­ber­ship doesn’t count. Who put you there? Not once do you meet with them all year. And so many things hap­pen­ing… and you’re talk­ing about this is the year of ca­lyp­so?” he said.

King stat­ed that all is­sues will be ad­dressed dur­ing TU­CO’s gen­er­al meet­ing lat­er this month.

—JENSEN LA VENDE