SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Ca­lyp­son­ian Du­ane O’Con­nor has threat­ened to file an in­junc­tion in court to halt Sun­day’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion if he is not placed as a fi­nal­ist.

Yes­ter­day, O’Con­nor, through at­tor­ney Kei­th Beck­les, sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba ques­tion­ing why the points on his score sheets were changed fol­low­ing his per­for­mance at Sat­ur­day’s Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta in Skin­ner’s Park, San Fer­nan­do.

When the names of the 15 fi­nal­ists for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion were an­nounced, O’ Con­nor, who sang “No Front Page,” was not in the line-up. He then re­quest­ed the sum­ma­ry score sheet which showed one judge had changed his mark from 28 to 25 points in the melody cat­e­go­ry, but there was ab­solute­ly no rea­son(s) giv­en for the change.

Beck­les said in the let­ter that if the re­duc­tion had not tak­en place O’Con­nor would have been in the fi­nals with a score of 413 points, as he would have been in the same po­si­tion as five oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans “even if there was a tie-break­ing event, he would have been a fi­nal­ist.”

As a re­sult of the anom­aly and lack of trans­paren­cy, O’Con­nor ap­proached the Ad­ju­di­cat­ing Re­view Com­mit­tee, who re­spond­ed by let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 6 say­ing “his ob­jec­tions had no mer­it and stands dis­missed.”

The com­mit­tee al­so ac­knowl­edged there was no ex­pressed rule with re­spect to the scratch­es and/or changes in the scores and the judge had ini­tialled the scratch mark ac­knowl­edg­ing his er­ror.

In this re­gard, Beck­les point­ed out that TU­CO failed to fol­low their own rules un­der part 3.8 of its hand­book, which states where an er­ror, fault or mis­take are iden­ti­fied, the com­mit­tee will al­low a hear­ing to the ad­ju­di­ca­tor to present an ex­pla­na­tion.

“In the cir­cum­stances, we de­mand that our client be award­ed au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion and/or ad­vance­ment to the fi­nal round of the com­pe­ti­tion,” Beck­les said.

He al­so de­mand­ed a rea­son/s for the score change. Beck­les gave TU­CO 12 hours to re­spond to the is­sues raised, fail­ing which O’Con­nor has in­struct­ed him to file an ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion to halt Sun­day’s com­pe­ti­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Masim­ba, in a tele­phone in­ter­view last night, said the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the com­mit­tee.

“Once I get a re­sponse from the com­mit­tee I will com­ment,” Masim­ba said.