Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Con­tro­ver­sy is brew­ing in Pan Trin­ba­go, mere days be­fore its tri­en­ni­al elec­tions on Sun­day. Up to late yes­ter­day, doc­u­ments were be­ing pre­pared to file an in­junc­tion in the High Court to stop the elec­tions, sched­uled for Cap­i­tal Plaza, for­mer­ly the Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain.

Pan Trin­ba­go sec­re­tary Richard Forteau was giv­en up to 10 am on Mon­day to ac­cept four rep­re­sen­ta­tives of steel­bands to con­test the elec­tions. Forteau failed to re­spond, de­spite re­ceiv­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tion on Fri­day that le­gal pro­ceed­ings would be ini­ti­at­ed oth­er­wise. Af­ter the four sub­mit­ted their nom­i­na­tions to Forteau, he told them the forms were in­valid be­cause they were not named as del­e­gates of any mem­ber steel­band.

The quar­tet is Kei­th Simp­son, Denise Her­nan­dez, Mau­rice Alexan­der and Stead­son Jack, who are con­test­ing the posts of trea­sur­er, ex­ter­nal re­la­tions of­fi­cer, ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer and trustee, re­spec­tive­ly. The four have sought le­gal ad­vice from Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and on Fri­day a le­gal let­ter was sent to Forteau to say that if he did not in­clude their names on the list of can­di­dates, an in­junc­tion would be filed to stay the elec­tions.

When con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day, Forteau said the doc­u­ments, sent via fax late on Fri­day from the law firm RLM & Co, were in­com­plete and that he would con­sult his lawyers. Nu­mer­ous calls to his mo­bile phone yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

The mem­bers are can­di­dates on the slate called The New Vi­sion­ar­ies, with To­bag­on­ian Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore, of Petrotrin Katz­jam­mers, run­ning for pres­i­dent. If she wins, it will be his­toric and a break in tra­di­tion at Pan Trin­ba­go, which has nev­er have had a woman at its helm.

Ac­cord­ing to Pan Trin­ba­go's con­sti­tu­tion, each mem­ber steel­band is re­quired to elect two del­e­gates to act as its rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the gen­er­al body and to give the sec­re­tary their names to en­able the two del­e­gates to at­tend and vote on be­half of the bands. It says any del­e­gat­ed mem­ber of a fi­nan­cial mem­ber steel­band is el­i­gi­ble for elec­tion to any of­fice of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

The lawyer's let­ter said Forteau was con­fus­ing the terms "del­e­gates" and "any del­e­gat­ed mem­ber" and in­ter­pret­ing them to mean the same thing. "Hav­ing re­gard to the con­duct of af­fairs of Pan Trin­ba­go for over 28 years and the in­ter­ests of rea­son­able­ness, fair­ness and com­mon sense, the term 'any del­e­gat­ed per­son' in Ar­ti­cle 10 can­not be equat­ed to the term 'del­e­gates' in Ar­ti­cle 7."