DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

So­ca artiste Machel Mon­tano has of­fi­cial­ly se­cured his 11th Road March ti­tle, ty­ing with the leg­endary Ald­wyn “Lord Kitch­en­er” Roberts and ce­ment­ing his place as the most dec­o­rat­ed Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tion win­ner in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry.

But the vic­to­ry is not go­ing down well with so­ca artiste Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez, who con­firmed he will not par­tic­i­pate in fu­ture Road March com­pe­ti­tions.

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) an­nounced the re­sults at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion’s VIP lounge at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Mon­tano nar­row­ly edged out Gar­lin’s by just 14 plays, with his Pardy be­ing played 267 times to Gar­lin’s Car­ry It (253 times). Gar­lin al­so se­cured third place with his song Thou­sand, which was played 22 times.

Mon­tano will re­ceive $250,000, a mo­bile head­set with the op­tion to port to bmo­bile and a one-year un­lim­it­ed mo­bile plan.

Be­yond his 11 Road March ti­tles, Mon­tano’s dec­o­rat­ed ca­reer in­cludes vic­to­ries in mul­ti­ple Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions—five So­ca Monarch ti­tles, one Chut­ney So­ca Monarch, al­so achieved this year, and one Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle last year.

How­ev­er, Mon­tano’s win has been cloud­ed by con­tro­ver­sy, fol­low­ing claims that the com­pe­ti­tion was rigged.

Con­cerns sur­faced af­ter TU­CO tab­u­la­tor Saman­tha Richards pub­licly re­vealed that Mon­tano was ahead of Gar­lin in the race dur­ing cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do on Car­ni­val Tues­day. While sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion has been anony­mous­ly leaked in pre­vi­ous years, Richards and a col­league were both fired soon af­ter for al­leged­ly breach­ing TU­CO’s code of con­duct.

Ig­nor­ing the con­tro­ver­sy, Mon­tano took to In­sta­gram to cel­e­brate yes­ter­day, ex­press­ing grat­i­tude for be­ing linked to one of T&T’s most icon­ic mu­si­cians.

“To share this ho­n­our with Ald­wyn ‘Lord Kitch­en­er’ Roberts is a dream come true and quite a sur­re­al feel­ing!!!”

He al­so thanked his team and fans, en­cour­ag­ing his sup­port­ers to chase their dreams.

“I want this to be a mes­sage to all the hard-work­ing peo­ple out there ... once you put in the work, you de­serve a PARDY!!! Nev­er let any­one say you’re too young, too old, too good or not de­serv­ing of your bless­ings. Every­one de­serves a PARDY!!!”

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about the fair­ness of the com­pe­ti­tion at yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence, TU­CO pres­i­dent Ains­ley King re­as­sured the pub­lic the re­sults were le­git­i­mate.

“There’s noth­ing like any mafia in the Road March, be­cause I don’t think any­body would take a chance like that be­cause any­body could come and set peo­ple, put peo­ple in the dif­fer­ent points and count. So, we are not ... we don’t in­tend to ac­tu­al­ly com­pro­mise our­selves like that,” King said.

He, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged the in­ci­dent with Richards and promised stronger mea­sures to pre­vent a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in the fu­ture.

“It was sur­pris­ing for us,” he said.

“They were briefed but what else could we do? Be­cause they re­ceived a brief and that still took place. We’ll just have to make sure that we have the right peo­ple,” he added.

Pardy song­writer An­dre Jef­fers cel­e­brat­ed se­cur­ing his first Road March ti­tle with Mon­tano, though it was not his first time win­ning the com­pe­ti­tion.

“In this par­tic­u­lar race, I thought what was re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing was that we were com­ing from be­hind, right. Car­ry It was an amaz­ing song. Bun­ji is the peo­ple’s cham­pi­on and it’s a song that res­onat­ed so strong­ly, so hav­ing to catch up to that and even­tu­al­ly just tip it at the line took a lot of work, took a lot of pa­tience. It took a lot of us hav­ing to trust Machel.”

Con­tact­ed af­ter the re­sults were an­nounced, Gar­lin re­mained un­daunt­ed, stat­ing that both he and his wife, Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez, had won and lost the Road March over the years.

In a video on In­sta­gram on Tues­day, Lyons-Al­varez had said she and her hus­band would be pulling out of fu­ture Road March races be­cause the in­tegri­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion had been com­pro­mised by the judge’s con­duct.

Yes­ter­day, Gar­lin re­called that they have of­ten been in the top three against Mon­tano for many years. How­ev­er, he too ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the TU­CO judge’s con­duct and de­fend­ed his wife’s de­ci­sion to step away from the com­pe­ti­tion.

“Noth­ing she did in that video she post­ed was wrong. She nev­er said any­thing about any par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual who’s in the com­pe­ti­tion or any­thing like that. What she said is based on what we saw—it would make sense that we pull square from this thing,” Gar­lin said.

Gar­lin added that the judge’s state­ment had dam­aged their trust in the com­pe­ti­tion.

“Be­cause, for a judge to out­right­ly come and do that, right, ain’t no telling what some of the oth­er judges might be think­ing or not think­ing. So, you have now dam­aged the trust fac­tor of this com­pe­ti­tion, which al­ready, a lot of peo­ple have been call­ing in­to ques­tion for a long, long, long time.”

Gar­lin ex­plained, how­ev­er, that he does not ac­tive­ly mar­ket his mu­sic, re­ly­ing in­stead on its or­gan­ic growth among fans. While he be­lieves an over­haul of the judg­ing sys­tem for the Road March com­pe­ti­tion may be nec­es­sary, he stressed that the pub­lic must first be made ful­ly aware of the ex­ist­ing com­pe­ti­tion rules.

At­tempts to con­tact Saman­tha Richards re­gard­ing the back­lash she has faced were un­suc­cess­ful.