Joshua Seemu­n­gal

With Car­ni­val 2023 less than five months away, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) re­mains in tur­moil, en­gulfed by in­fight­ing, res­ig­na­tions and on­go­ing le­gal bat­tles.

The as­so­ci­a­tion, recog­nised by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of car­ni­val band lead­ers, can­not func­tion be­cause its board con­sists of on­ly three mem­bers–two mem­bers less than the re­quired quo­rum ac­cord­ing to the TTC­BA’s by-laws.

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion, there are sev­er­al le­gal mat­ters be­fore the court in­volv­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion, the cur­rent board, for­mer di­rec­tors, and for­mer TTC­BA pres­i­dent Ros­alind Gabriel.

In Au­gust, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in grant­ed an in­junc­tion to stop a spe­cial meet­ing called by the re­main­ing mem­bers of the TTC­BA board, aimed at ap­point­ing di­rec­tors to meet the quo­rum.

A group of 17 or­di­nary mem­bers, in­clud­ing Gabriel, sought the in­junc­tion.

The group al­so is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the TTC­BA Board, claim­ing that the board failed to re­spond to a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion filed against it.

A sec­ond mat­ter be­tween for­mer board mem­bers Dune Ali, Ger­ard Weekes and Jacque­line Burgess, and Gabriel and the TTC­BA al­so re­mains be­fore the High Court. The claimants al­lege that the TTC­BA held an un­law­ful board meet­ing to re­move Weekes and Burgess from the ex­ec­u­tive.

And as the par­ties wait for judge­ments to be de­liv­ered, the fu­ture of the TTC­BA re­mains un­cer­tain just five years af­ter tak­ing over from the NC­BA as the as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing band lead­ers.

Justice Carol Gobin

The Board’s ac­count

Over the last week, the Sun­day Guardian spoke to more than five se­nior TTC­BA sources, in­clud­ing cur­rent di­rec­tors, for­mer di­rec­tors and se­nior mem­bers about the state of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

All of them asked to speak off the record, say­ing that they were scared of, what they called, the ‘pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal reper­cus­sions’ of speak­ing on the record about these is­sues.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the board, which was elect­ed in late 2020, split af­ter the 2022 Taste of Car­ni­val show.

The TTC­BA sources blamed the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s cur­rent state on the lead­er­ship of Gabriel, the for­mer TTC­BA pres­i­dent.

Gabriel, who was re-elect­ed as pres­i­dent in No­vem­ber 2020, re­signed on March 23, 2022, cit­ing in­ter­nal pres­sure to force her out.

Fol­low­ing her res­ig­na­tion, she formed part of a group that filed an in­junc­tion to pre­vent the board from hold­ing a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing to re­con­sti­tute the board.

The board and sev­er­al TTC­BA se­nior mem­bers are ques­tion­ing her de­ci­sion to file an in­junc­tion, say­ing the move is stalling the as­so­ci­a­tion.

They said, af­ter all, Gabriel was one of two peo­ple who re­cent­ly re­signed, leav­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion short of its quo­rum in the first place.

The sources said dis­agree­ments with Gabriel ex­ist­ed for months, main­ly over a per­ceived lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the pres­i­dent and her di­rec­tors.

How­ev­er,  board sources said things hit the fan over two is­sues re­lat­ed to the 2022 Taste of Car­ni­val Show–the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a new judg­ing sys­tem and a break­down of how the $1 mil­lion do­nat­ed by First Cit­i­zens was spent.

Judg­ing sys­tem un­der ques­tion

Di­rec­tors, for­mer di­rec­tors and se­nior mem­bers of the TTC­BA have ex­pressed con­cern over a ‘new judg­ing sys­tem’ used for the Taste of Car­ni­val 2022 Se­nior Kings and Queens com­pe­ti­tion.

A group of present and past board mem­bers called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be launched by the then TTC­BA pres­i­dent in­to the ad­ju­di­ca­tion sys­tem al­leged­ly im­ple­ment­ed by chief judge Nigel East­man.

Their call came af­ter one of the com­pe­ti­tion’s judges re­port­ed to the board that they ob­served judges be­ing hand­ed back score­sheets to be rescored dur­ing the Kings and Queens com­pe­ti­tion in Taste of Car­ni­val 2022.

“We said, Miss Gabriel, we have to in­ves­ti­gate this be­cause we un­der­stand that the judg­ing is not fair. Some­thing is wrong. One of the judges said two fe­male judges were giv­en their score­sheets to rescore by the chief judge…We said we have to find out about this sys­tem of judg­ing that is tak­ing place in our Car­ni­val,” a di­rec­tor said.

“East­man told us that he has a new sys­tem. There is a set of front­line judges and a back­line set of judges. The front­line judges don’t de­ter­mine the score, it’s the back­line judges who ex­am­ine the front­line judges and de­ter­mine which is good for them or not good for them…That came out of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The board sources said be­fore the change an ag­gre­gate scor­ing sys­tem was used. The ag­gre­gate sys­tem took the scores of sev­en in­di­vid­ual judges. The high­est and low­est scores were dropped, and then the fi­nal score was found by av­er­ag­ing the re­main­ing five scores.

“He (East­man) changed that, and nat­u­ral­ly, now you’re more like­ly to have bi­as­es. The back­line judges are now the ones who take the judge’s scores in the front­line and de­ter­mine what the re­sult should be…That is wrong,” a for­mer com­pe­ti­tion judge, and se­nior mem­ber, said.

“The chief judge, what he does, has sev­en judges in front, four judges be­hind, and then he has the fi­nal say, which the mas fra­ter­ni­ty doesn’t know about. So, if sev­en come up and say John Smith won Band of the Year, the four be­hind could over­rule it, and if they don’t over­rule it, then he could eas­i­ly over­rule it, and that has to be ex­posed,” a board mem­ber said.

An­oth­er board mem­ber con­firmed a com­plaint was made by one of the judges about East­man.

They said, in their opin­ion, the chief judge ought to have been re­moved from the po­si­tion.

An in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed in­to the claims against East­man, and the re­port de­ter­mined that the judg­ing sys­tem ought to be re-ex­am­ined.

The re­port, which sev­er­al board sources al­lege was sani­tised, made no dis­ci­pli­nary pro­nounce­ments about East­man’s al­leged in­volve­ment, how­ev­er.

“If you make a change to an ac­count­ing vouch­er, you can’t dis­card the vouch­er, you have to keep the old vouch­er, draw two lines through the can­cel so that you could see the change…When it was asked of East­man what he did with the old score­card, he said, dis­card it…Why would you do that?” a board source re­called from the TTC­BA’s tri­bunal.

TTC­BA’s chief judge: I was cleared

Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed TTC­BA’s Chief Judge Nigel East­man for com­ment on the claims made by board mem­bers and for­mer board mem­bers.

East­man con­firmed that he ap­peared be­fore a TTC­BA tri­bunal, but said he was cleared.

“That is so un­true. I use the same sys­tem–sev­en judges–one high, one low and the rest of the marks are used. In the less­er cat­e­gories, I used five judges–the high and low are re­moved and I use the three scores,” East­man said.

“They (the board) don’t even know the process and as I ex­plained to the tri­bunal, it’s a process. If it is a judge writes some­thing, I have to scru­ti­nise it to see if there are any is­sues. Like, for ex­am­ple, if some­body puts in a mark of 53, but in their com­ments, they wrote–ex­cel­lent pro­duc­tion, you can’t have ex­cel­lent and 53, so I would send the scores back.”

East­man said it was ‘high­ly ir­reg­u­lar’ for the board of the TTC­BA to throw al­le­ga­tions against him, giv­en the tur­moil they find them­selves in cur­rent­ly.

“It’s in­ter­est­ing to hear what the al­le­ga­tions are, and from whom it is com­ing be­cause when I was as­signed chief judge it was when Ros­alind Gabriel was in charge. She checked over the sys­tem and said, go,” he said about the claims made by present and for­mer TTC­BA di­rec­tors.

“Since the TTC­BA has forced Gabriel out of pow­er and some ques­tion­able peo­ple are now in pow­er, all of a sud­den a lot of al­le­ga­tions are com­ing on me; al­le­ga­tions I can­not un­der­stand. It’s al­ways a case of sour grapes. They put out a band and didn’t win, so the judge do some­thing. I choose a pan­el and the pan­el judges, I don’t judge...They want to make mediocre cos­tumes and ex­pect to be in the fi­nal.”

Carnival Queen 2022 Shynel Camile Brizan portrays Olugbe-Rere Ko-The Spirt who brings Good things in the African category during the Kings and Queen finals at the Queen’s Park Savannah. Port-of-Spain, in March.

KERWIN PIERRE

'They are try­ing to start mis­chief'

Mean­while, Gabriel ac­cused the cur­rent and for­mer di­rec­tors, who blamed her for im­ple­ment­ing the judg­ing sys­tem in ques­tion, of try­ing to start mis­chief.

Say­ing they nev­er proved them­selves ca­pa­ble of the po­si­tions they held, she said, “There’s an in­de­pen­dent group of judges who do the judg­ing. Once every­thing is put in place, the judges form their own opin­ions in­de­pen­dent­ly. I didn’t judge. This is­sue start­ed the en­tire con­fu­sion in the TTC­BA.”

The TTC­BA, bar­ring a change, is ex­pect­ed to over­see the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of many of the Car­ni­val 2023 com­pe­ti­tions.

The $1 mil­lion do­na­tion

Ac­cord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer board mem­bers, de­spite re­quests, Gabriel did not pro­vide them with a doc­u­ment­ed break­down of how the $1 mil­lion First Cit­i­zens do­nat­ed to the Taste of Car­ni­val’s Kings and Queens com­pe­ti­tion was spent.

Af­ter the NCC pro­vid­ed $1.5 mil­lion to the TTC­BA for the Taste of Car­ni­val Show 2022, Gabriel se­cured an­oth­er $1 mil­lion in spon­sor­ship from FCB.

“The board was told that she se­cured $1 mil­lion from FCB. The board was not aware of how the funds were be­ing dis­persed. The board did not sit down and say, we will give first prize X, or even if we had a draft that she changed af­ter, there was noth­ing. We did not know what the prize mon­ey was about, noth­ing at all,” an un­named di­rec­tor claimed.

The claim was sup­port­ed by cur­rent and for­mer di­rec­tors. Sev­er­al board mem­bers and for­mer board mem­bers said they in­di­vid­u­al­ly asked Gabriel for a break­down, but were nev­er giv­en one.

They claimed, in­stead, they were blocked on What­sApp and os­tracised.

“No­body could ask her how she spent it, what she did with it, what was the prize struc­ture and it’s like, Miss Gabriel, you have a board, why don’t you com­mu­ni­cate with the board? And there was no an­swer. It’s like she was act­ing as though we were ask­ing her too many ques­tions, and then she upped and re­signed,” an­oth­er un­named board source said.

“We were ask­ing about the ac­count­abil­i­ty of the $1 mil­lion and her ac­count­abil­i­ty to the board was to say $820,000 was paid in prize mon­ey and $180,000 was paid in sup­pli­ers. No writ­ten doc­u­ment, noth­ing…It nev­er even come through our ac­count. Every­thing was paid through the FCB ac­count, and that’s why we were query­ing it. It should have come through our ac­count if it’s spon­sor­ship mon­ey. That is just wrong,” a board source said.

Gabriel gives her ac­count

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to the for­mer TTC­BA pres­i­dent about the ac­cu­sa­tions made by the board and some for­mer di­rec­tors. She said she strug­gles to un­der­stand why the board is com­plain­ing about her still since she left the or­gan­i­sa­tion in March, giv­ing the board free reign.

She de­nied al­le­ga­tions that she op­er­at­ed as a dic­ta­tor dur­ing her tenure in of­fice.

The chil­dren's mas band leader said that due to no fault of her own, she had no choice but to run it as a one-man show.

“I went out, in the last minute, and got spon­sor­ship from FCB–All of this was aired in the news­pa­pers al­ready. I nev­er saw any mem­bers of the board in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to help me with any­thing, ex­cept the PRO. So all who talk­ing now, nev­er showed their face to help any­body,” Gabriel said.

“I did my ut­most best. The Taste of Car­ni­val event was very well run. The Kings and Queens said it was the quick­est they ever got paid in their lives. They got mon­ey on March 23, every­body was able to col­lect their prize monies. But none of that pleased the board. So when I be­gan hear­ing the whis­pers, I qui­et­ly sub­mit­ted my res­ig­na­tion and went home in my house and left them to run it how they want it to be run.”

Un­like the board, Gabriel be­lieved that the split came af­ter then TTC­BA vice pres­i­dent An­drew Al­lene be­gan al­leged­ly blam­ing her for his cos­tume's plac­ing in the Se­nior Kings and Queens com­pe­ti­tion.

Gabriel al­so de­nied al­le­ga­tions that she was yet to ac­count for First Cit­i­zens' $1 mil­lion do­na­tion to the Taste of Car­ni­val 2022 show.

She said the break­down of the prizes was avail­able in the TTC­BA of­fice at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“It was al­ways there, and the break­down of every cent of Car­ni­val is in the NCC as well, and it has been there since Car­ni­val fin­ished. You could go to the NCC and they will show you the fold­er. What hap­pened with the FCB mon­ey is that when they de­cid­ed they would give $1 mil­lion in prizes for Kings and Queens, the break­down was $180,000 for the NCC to help with the pro­duc­tion of the show, and the rest of that $820,000 was dis­trib­uted straight to the Kings’ and Queens’ ac­counts,” Gabriel said.

“I left the TTC­BA with every cent ac­count­ed for. I al­so left the TTC­BA with four years' fi­nan­cials–2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.”

The for­mer TTC­BA pres­i­dent said de­spite the as­so­ci­a­tion’s cur­rent state she was hop­ing that an elec­tion will be called soon, and a new, com­pe­tent slate of board di­rec­tors would be in­stalled.

She was al­so con­fi­dent that Car­ni­val 2023 will be a qual­i­ty show.

Since the TTC­BA board, led by Gabriel, as­sumed con­trol in No­vem­ber 2020, two di­rec­tors (Ger­ard Weekes and Jacque­line Burgess) were re­moved, a pres­i­dent (Gabriel) and an act­ing pres­i­dent (An­drew Al­lene) re­signed, while an­oth­er two board mem­bers (Mark Ayen and Dune Ali) re­signed.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s by-laws, the TTC­BA board can­not car­ry out func­tions un­less it meets its quo­rum of five peo­ple.

The cur­rent board can­not con­vene its mem­ber­ship for an elec­tion un­til the high court in­junc­tion, filed by Gabriel and 16 oth­ers, is lift­ed.

A judge­ment is ex­pect­ed with­in two weeks.

The TTC­BA was formed in Jan­u­ary 2013 by a group of band lead­ers that broke away from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Board As­so­ci­a­tion which was led by David Lopez.

Lopez faced sev­er­al cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions from the mem­ber­ship dur­ing his stint as NC­BA leader.

TTC­BA was recog­nised by the Gov­ern­ment in 2017 as the as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing lo­cal band lead­ers.