Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore has blamed the push­ing back of elec­tions and the ex­ten­sion of her term of of­fice by two years on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which in­ter­rupt­ed the work of the body that gov­erns the steel­pan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

Her crit­ics with­in the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty ar­gue that she does not have their full sup­port and she is abus­ing her pow­er by stay­ing in pow­er with­out fac­ing elec­tions.

“We had an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing last Sun­day at the Radis­son Ho­tel. Mem­bers de­cid­ed to de­bate a mo­tion to give the ex­ec­u­tive an ex­ten­sion for the next two years. As you know, our con­ven­tion was post­poned be­cause of the state of emer­gency and the pro­to­cols with re­gard to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. We have served al­most a year of that term al­ready. The mem­bers agreed that we should have an ex­ten­sion. The mo­tion was de­bat­ed and 110 per­sons vot­ed for the ex­ten­sion and 12 per­sons vot­ed against and eight ab­stained. It was a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process,” Ram­sey-Moore told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day.

Ram­sey-Moore as­sumed her po­si­tion as Pres­i­dent in 2018 which was sup­posed to last un­til 2021 and the con­ven­tion was due in Oc­to­ber 2021 but she said the COVID-19 pro­to­cols did not al­low it as in per­son meet­ings could not be held.

“We met with our mem­bers in small num­bers and they ad­vised us to post­pone. On Sun­day, the body agreed that the ex­ec­u­tive lost two years in of­fice and we didn’t have a Panora­ma in 2021 and we lost two years of ac­tiv­i­ties, they said I should con­tin­ue in of­fice.”

She added that it is not the first time that Pan Trin­ba­go has got­ten it­self in­to such a sit­u­a­tion.

“One of the rea­sons why I al­lowed the mo­tion is that there was prece­dence where our same mem­ber­ship would have moved and agreed on a mo­tion for an ex­ec­u­tive to con­tin­ue in of­fice from 2012 to 2015, so a prece­dence was set for that. It is not about me, it is about what the mem­ber­ship want­ed.”

She al­so said she will seek le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue.

Cap­tain of the San City Steel Sym­pho­ny Aquil Ar­rindell who has been crit­i­cal of Ram­sey-Moore’s ac­tions told the Sun­day Guardian that they refuse to be drawn in­to any le­gal bat­tle with her but at the same time they are seek­ing ad­vice on her “il­le­gal ac­tions.”

“A mo­tion such as that could on­ly be le­gal if it is in a con­ven­tion. What took place Sun­day was not a con­ven­tion, it was a con­tin­ued meet­ing from an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing. The orig­i­nal agen­da was to dis­cuss pan month and to rat­i­fy min­utes. The agen­da didn’t have any­thing to do with ex­tend­ing her term. No pres­i­dent has the dis­cre­tionary right to de­cide whether they want an elec­tion or not.”

Com­ment­ing on next year’s car­ni­val, the first full car­ni­val since the pan­dem­ic start­ed in 2020, he said mem­bers of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty are pro­fes­sion­als and de­spite con­tro­ver­sies in its gov­ern­ing body, they al­ways act pro­fes­sion­al dur­ing car­ni­val.

“Steel­band peo­ple al­ways get the job done. Every time you see a suc­cess­ful event it not be­cause of Pan Trin­ba­go, it is be­cause of the re­silience of the steel­band man.”