DEREK ACHONG

The 34th an­nu­al meet­ing of the Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (COTT) had to be post­poned on Thurs­day due to an al­leged dis­tur­bance from mem­bers of a ri­val or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The in­ci­dent was re­vealed by COTT in a press re­lease is­sued on Sat­ur­day.

The re­lease stat­ed that the meet­ing, at which mem­bers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion were ex­pect­ed to vote on a new Board of Di­rec­tors, was sched­uled for 5 pm at the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS) head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain.

The re­lease said: “The de­ci­sion to ad­journ the meet­ing was tak­en by the Chair­per­son, af­ter COTT’s CEO re­quest­ed to leave the meet­ing out of an abun­dance of cau­tion and with the ut­most con­cern for the safe­ty and well-be­ing of mem­bers and em­ploy­ees present.”

It said that sev­er­al mem­bers had ex­pressed their dis­agree­ment with the COTT Board of Di­rec­tors Guide­lines that were cir­cu­lat­ed to mem­bers 21 days be­fore the meet­ing.

Stat­ing that the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which col­lects roy­al­ties on be­half of com­posers, pub­lish­ers and per­form­ers through its li­cens­ing process, is ded­i­cat­ed to con­duct­ing a just and trans­par­ent an­nu­al meet­ing and elec­tion process, the re­lease said that a date, time and lo­ca­tion for a new meet­ing will be pro­vid­ed to mem­bers.

In a de­tailed state­ment pro­vid­ed to Guardian Me­dia, in­cum­bent COTT Pres­i­dent Cur­tis Jor­dan re­vealed de­tails of what tran­spired.

He claimed that there was a ver­bal con­fronta­tion with a group of dis­sent­ing mem­bers near Wood­ford Square be­fore mem­bers en­tered the meet­ing.

Jor­dan claimed that the group en­tered the meet­ing and at­tempt­ed to dis­rupt the pro­ceed­ings while de­mand­ing changes to the es­tab­lished elec­tion rules and guide­lines.

“The sit­u­a­tion be­came ex­treme­ly hos­tile, with our mem­bers, di­rec­tors, and staff be­ing threat­ened and sub­ject­ed to ver­bal abuse,” Jor­dan said.

“In COTT’s his­to­ry, we have nev­er wit­nessed such dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour at an AGM. It was shock­ing for all reg­u­lar at­ten­dees,” he added.

“This elec­tion will take place with­in 21 days, and the or­gan­i­sa­tion will im­ple­ment proac­tive mea­sures to pre­vent any sim­i­lar in­ci­dents,” he added.

Al­though Jor­dan iden­ti­fied a for­mer se­nior COTT of­fi­cial and a se­nior of­fi­cial at a ri­val or­gan­i­sa­tion as be­ing the in­sti­ga­tors of the dis­rup­tion, their iden­ti­ties and that of the or­gan­i­sa­tion were with­held as this news­pa­per was un­able to con­tact them to re­spond to the se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions, up to late yes­ter­day.