Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) elec­tion, sched­uled for this Sun­day, will pro­ceed as planned.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion by pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kurt Allen seek­ing to stop and de­fer the poll.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad had dis­missed an ex-parte ap­pli­ca­tion from Allen last week­end and reached the same con­clu­sion af­ter giv­ing TU­CO, its cur­rent pres­i­dent Ains­ley King, and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shirlane Hen­drick­son an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to Allen’s claims dur­ing a hear­ing yes­ter­day.

In his ap­pli­ca­tion, Allen, who won the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion in 2010, raised sev­er­al con­cerns about the elec­tion, in­clud­ing not be­ing pro­vid­ed with an up­dat­ed mem­ber­ship list with con­tact in­for­ma­tion and the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial records for the past three years.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions, Allen’s at­tor­ney, Blaine So­bri­an of Quan­tum Le­gal, ques­tioned whether the elec­tion was prop­er­ly set by TU­CO’s gen­er­al coun­cil, not­ing that the date was an­nounced by pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Ron­dell Don­awa in late May.

He al­so claimed the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion did not per­mit a snap elec­tion be­fore the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive’s term end­ed next month.

Asked by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad why there had been a de­lay in fil­ing the case af­ter the elec­tion was an­nounced, So­bri­an said: “It was done as soon as he prac­ti­cal­ly could.”

He al­so raised con­cerns about al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the re­cent reg­is­tra­tion of new mem­bers.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, at­tor­ney Umesh Ma­haraj, who rep­re­sent­ed TU­CO, King and Hen­drick­son, ar­gued that Allen had not pre­sent­ed a strong enough case re­gard­ing the al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties to jus­ti­fy an in­junc­tion.

He said Don­awa had mere­ly an­nounced a de­ci­sion that had al­ready been prop­er­ly made by the gen­er­al coun­cil.

Ma­haraj said the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its mem­bers would suf­fer “grave” prej­u­dice if the elec­tion was halt­ed.

He sug­gest­ed that post­pon­ing the elec­tion would dis­rupt TU­CO’s prepa­ra­tions for next year’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that Allen had an ar­guable sub­stan­tive case, he ruled that the con­cerns raised were not suf­fi­cient to halt the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

Not­ing that Allen had al­ready pub­licly raised con­cerns about the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive, the judge said the mem­ber­ship was free to de­cide whether it want­ed a new di­rec­tion for the or­gan­i­sa­tion dur­ing the elec­tion.

“These are con­cerns that can be dis­cussed with the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship to con­vince them of a need for change,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

The judge ad­vised that if Allen is ul­ti­mate­ly suc­cess­ful in his sub­stan­tive case, the court could or­der that the elec­tion be held again.

He al­so not­ed that grant­i­ng an in­junc­tion would prej­u­dice oth­er can­di­dates con­test­ing the elec­tion, none of whom in­ter­vened in the case to raise sim­i­lar con­cerns.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so point­ed out that TU­CO had al­ready spent $30,000 to host the elec­tion and would be un­able to re­cov­er those funds.

On the is­sue of the mem­ber­ship list, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that it had been pro­vid­ed on June 29. How­ev­er, he ruled that Allen was not en­ti­tled to mem­bers’ con­tact in­for­ma­tion as he had claimed.

De­spite dis­miss­ing the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered TU­CO to pro­vide Allen with the fi­nal list of mem­bers el­i­gi­ble to vote, as the dead­line for reg­is­tra­tion was one day af­ter the list had been pro­vid­ed.

The judge al­so re­ject­ed Allen’s claim that the elec­tion could on­ly take place af­ter the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive com­plet­ed its three-year term, not­ing that Allen had ad­mit­ted to pub­licly call­ing for an im­me­di­ate elec­tion be­fore one was an­nounced.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad fur­ther ruled that TU­CO was not re­quired un­der its con­sti­tu­tion to pro­vide au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial records to its mem­ber­ship as claimed.

He al­so con­sid­ered the funds al­ready spent by the or­gan­i­sa­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the elec­tion.

Allen was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Criston J Williams and Anthea Smith.