Carisa Lee

A his­toric col­lab­o­ra­tion!

That’s what mem­bers of Pan Trin­ba­go and the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) are call­ing Tues­day's dual press con­fer­ence held at the New Town Play­boys Pa­n­yard on Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain.

“Ca­lyp­so and Steel pan is the cul­ture of Trinidad,” the group sang.

Both or­gan­i­sa­tions for the first time band­ed to­geth­er to high­light what they re­ferred to as the un­con­sti­tu­tion­al po­si­tions of their pres­i­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to mem­bers of Pan Trin­ba­go, the cur­rent three-year term of pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey Moore, who was elect­ed on Oc­to­ber 27, 2018, has end­ed.

They said her un­will­ing­ness to call an elec­tion is un­law­ful.

“What they are do­ing or what they have done is ma­nip­u­late the Con­sti­tu­tion, they have showed a cer­tain amount of mis­use and abuse of the Con­sti­tu­tion and they have not been hon­est in their de­lib­er­a­tion so that they can post­pone the elec­tion,” Pan Trin­ba­go mem­ber Kei­th By­er said.

By­er said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was un­der threat es­pe­cial­ly as the ex­ec­u­tive was now de­plet­ed with on­ly six mem­bers re­main­ing. He said the al­most in­quo­rate mem­ber­ship should not be mak­ing de­ci­sions for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“If that don’t dri­ve you to have an elec­tion, if the fact that the elec­tion is now due, then what is the ques­tion, the ques­tion is I want to hold on to pow­er at all cost even if it’s me alone,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ram­sey-Moore said the pan­dem­ic was the on­ly rea­son for the de­lay of the con­ven­tion and by ex­ten­sion the elec­tion. She said, it’s a hand­ful of bands that were mak­ing these claims.

“Our mem­bers have in­formed us, the ma­jor­i­ty of them have in­formed us that they are not quite ready for a phys­i­cal plat­form. We did not make the de­ci­sion just like that you know,” she said.

By­er said when the Con­sti­tu­tion was writ­ten they did not con­sid­er a pan­dem­ic. He said the ap­prox­i­mate 300 mem­bers can con­vene in, “open spaces” or even vir­tu­al­ly.

“We have no pres­i­dent so right now they have no au­thor­i­ty to call an elec­tion…we may have to look for a care­tak­er com­mit­tee,” he added.

It’s for these rea­sons Pan Trin­ba­go start­ed the process of fil­ing le­gal ac­tion. Ac­cord­ing to mem­ber Fuad Abu Bakr ,all the ex­cus­es Ram­sey-Moore made for post­pon­ing the elec­tion were woe­ful.

“In a mil­lion dif­fer­ent ways, they vi­o­late the law,” Abu Bakr said as he quot­ed the Mighty Spar­row.

He said the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) car­ries out Pan Trin­ba­go’s elec­tion and they are ca­pa­ble of man­ag­ing the vote of 300 peo­ple.

“I im­plore this Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-More regime to call the elec­tion..doh (sic) jeop­ar­dise pan­man mu­sic, doh (sic) jeop­ar­dise pan­man mon­ey,” he said.

Fuad Abu Bakr said even as Desmond Al­lum Cham­bers pre­pared le­gal doc­u­ments, he hoped good sense pre­vails and the oth­ers in the ex­ec­u­tive to put pres­sure on Ram­sey Moore to so the right thing.

“We hope that we can avoid spend­ing that mon­ey and we hope the Pan Trin­ba­go can avoid spend­ing our mon­ey to de­fend such a claim,” he said.

An­oth­er mem­ber, Robert Her­nan­dez said they did not want to air Pan Trin­ba­go’s busi­ness but they felt like they had no choice.

“It is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do the right thing and take back this or­gan­i­sa­tion from the cur­rent group that has to­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ed us,” he said.

TU­CO mem­ber Ab­bi Black­man said Ains­ley King pro­nounced him­self as pres­i­dent with­out a by-elec­tion. She said the mem­bers of TU­CO were dis­grun­tled as they felt that their rights were be­ing dis­re­gard­ed.

“We as the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of this or­gan­i­sa­tion say no more,” she said.

On Mon­day, in a press re­lease, King said his pres­i­den­cy was a de­ci­sion made by the gen­er­al coun­cil and the vote was nu­mi­nous by all mem­bers present.

But TU­CO mem­ber Ken­wrick “Ken­ny J” Joseph said that’s not the process and the pres­i­dent shall be elect­ed by se­cret bal­lot.

He said the gen­er­al coun­cil has pow­ers to fill the va­can­cy un­til a by-elec­tion. He said Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er Re­sis­tance” Masim­ba died on Ju­ly 13.

He said their con­sti­tu­tion was still un­der con­sti­tu­tion af­ter two re­form at­tempts and the cur­rent pres­i­dent was float­ing the one de­vel­oped in 1993.

“Some peo­ple have been do­ing the wrong so long that it be­comes cor­rect, I don’t un­der­stand, and they stick to it be­cause it has been work­ing so we want to make sure that it doesn’t work this time,” Ken­ny J said.

At­tempts to reach King were un­suc­cess­ful.

Both or­gan­i­sa­tions want the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and the Min­istry of Cul­ture to know that they were not pleased with what was hap­pen­ing at both Pan Trin­ba­go and TU­CO and asked for in­ter­ven­tion.