Loyse Vin­cent

An on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy be­tween the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion’s (TFC) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man George Lea­cock and Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) To­ba­go chair­man Ains­ley King is threat­en­ing this year’s ca­lyp­so sea­son on the is­land.

The hands-off ap­proach by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Tourism Sec­re­tary Na­dine Stew­art-Phillips is mak­ing the sit­u­a­tion worse, Tu­co claims.

Ear­li­er this week, the TFC es­tab­lished two new tents, fund­ed by the THA, with­out Tu­co’s in­volve­ment, claim­ing of­fi­cials of the ca­lyp­so or­gan­i­sa­tion had not at­tend­ed a pro­pos­al meet­ing.

Last year, there were nine THA-spon­sored tents, for which “the ex­pen­di­ture proved fruit­less as there was lim­it­ed re­al ca­lyp­so tent ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land”, Lea­cock said in a state­ment on Jan­u­ary 24.

He said THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles had di­rect­ed the TFC to re­solve the is­sue, so a pro­pos­al had been pre­pared.

“The pro­pos­al will see more con­cen­trat­ed fund­ing for two ca­lyp­so tents and pos­si­bly a third—fo­cused on de­vel­op­ment—in 2019,” he said in the state­ment.

Lea­cock said all in­ter­est­ed par­ties were in­vit­ed to a meet­ing, but “Tu­co did not at­tend.” How­ev­er, he added, “a small group of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans at­tend­ed and con­tributed to round­ing out the pro­pos­al”.

King said Tu­co of­fi­cials are not pre­pared to meet with Lea­cock un­less there is me­di­a­tion.

In a Jan­u­ary 26 state­ment, the ca­lyp­so or­gan­i­sa­tion said it had sent its bud­get and pro­pos­al to the TFC, as well as a sep­a­rate let­ter claim­ing that Lea­cock’s “ac­tions...over the past two years...(dic­tat­ed that) me­di­a­tion is nec­es­sary dur­ing any form of dis­cus­sions (with him)”.

King said Tu­co’s re­quest for sim­i­lar in­ter­ven­tion in 2017 re­mained un­ad­dressed.

“I went to the TFC of­fice to meet with Mr Lea­cock to dis­cuss ra­dio ad­ver­tis­ing for Tu­co events for the sea­son. I was force­ful­ly re­moved from the TFC of­fice by George Lea­cock,” he claimed.

King said when he spoke with Stew­art-Phillips about the in­ci­dent, “she sends me back to Mr Lea­cock to find a so­lu­tion”.

He asked: “How can she send me back to the same per­son who caused the prob­lem in the first place with­out some­one else to act as me­di­a­tor?”

King said Tu­co’s gov­ern­ing body in Trinidad will meet be­fore the end of the week to dis­cuss the way for­ward.

Stew­art-Phillips de­clined to com­ment and said Lea­cock was han­dling all queries on the mat­ter.