Derek Achong

Vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Morel “King Lu­ta” Pe­ters is no longer seek­ing an in­junc­tion against the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) as part of his le­gal ac­tion against it over its fail­ure to hold a by-elec­tion fol­low­ing the pass­ing of for­mer TU­CO pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er Re­sis­tance” Mas­sim­ba.

In De­cem­ber, last year, Pe­ters filed a law­suit over the is­sue in­clud­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion com­pelling the elec­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Pe­ters’ lawyer with­drew the in­junc­tion as­pect of the case when it came up for a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The de­ci­sion on the in­junc­tion means that for­mer TU­CO Vice Pres­i­dent and cur­rent Pres­i­dent Ains­ley King would re­main in the post at least un­til the law­suit is de­ter­mined by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran or un­til the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s gen­er­al coun­cil de­cides to host the elec­tion.

The first case man­age­ment hear­ing of the sub­stan­tive case is set to take place on March 2.

In his law­suit, Pe­ters, a two-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch, is claim­ing that the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil breached its con­sti­tu­tion when it vot­ed for King to be el­e­vat­ed to the post, af­ter Mas­sim­ba passed away on Ju­ly 13, last year.

The 71-year-old from Bar­rack­pore is re­ly­ing on Ar­ti­cle 9(j) of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion, which states that the Gen­er­al Coun­cil has the pow­er to fill a va­can­cy by the show of hands or by se­cret bal­lot un­til the by-elec­tion takes place, which will be no lat­er than three months of such va­can­cy aris­ing.

In his af­fi­davit at­tached to his law­suit, Pe­ters sought to ex­plain why he is pur­su­ing the law­suit.

“I am very in­ter­est­ed in see­ing that TU­CO is prop­er­ly gov­erned and that the best in­ter­ests of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are tak­en in­to ac­count in so do­ing and I stand to be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion tak­en by the De­fen­dant in its ca­pac­i­ty as the gov­ern­ing body for ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in T&T,” Pe­ters said.

Pe­ters claimed that af­ter he threat­ened le­gal ac­tion in Oc­to­ber, last year, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Shirlane Hen­drick­son failed to ad­dress his con­cerns over the al­leged breach of the con­sti­tu­tion.

“It is clear that the De­fen­dant has no in­ten­tion of re­scind­ing its de­ci­sion and re­mains de­fi­ant in its ‘el­e­va­tion’ of Mr King to the Pres­i­den­cy of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Pe­ters said.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, when the is­sue was raised by Pe­ters, late last year, King, the for­mer Chair­man of TU­CO’s To­ba­go Zone, de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he claimed that sim­i­lar ac­tion was tak­en by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil in the past to fill un­ex­pect­ed va­can­cies.

“I threw the di­rec­tion and fu­ture of the or­gan­i­sa­tion in the hands of them. They were the ones who de­cid­ed that based on what is hap­pen­ing and the in­ter­pre­ta­tion, let us have a vote and vote was tak­en,” King said at the time.

Pe­ters is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Tay­lor, while Umesh Ma­haraj and Ner­isa Bala are rep­re­sent­ing TU­CO.