In­nis Fran­cis

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) yes­ter­day re­mind­ed stake­hold­ers that South/Cen­tral Zone chair­man Steve “Ras Kom­man­da” Pas­call re­mains in of­fice, and con­firmed that a fol­low-up meet­ing will be held on Sun­day at the San Fer­nan­do Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre at 10 am to ad­dress on­go­ing is­sues.

This comes af­ter an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing on Au­gust 6, where some mem­bers list­ed a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against Pas­call as a pri­or­i­ty item, cit­ing al­leged “wrong­do­ing” in of­fice. The agen­da al­so in­clud­ed set­ting a date for South/Cen­tral Zone elec­tions and ap­point­ing a re­turn­ing of­fi­cer.

When con­tact­ed on the is­sue, how­ev­er, Pas­call dis­missed the move, say­ing: “That is it, I would ad­dress every­thing at the meet­ing. I don’t deal with files. Two months af­ter, they try to set me up with a coup. TU­CO has no room for a let­ter of no con­fi­dence… I don’t mind you want a post, but don’t as­sas­si­nate a man’s char­ac­ter.”

Fol­low­ing the Au­gust 6 meet­ing, TU­CO is­sued a state­ment clar­i­fy­ing that the South/Cen­tral zon­al ex­ec­u­tive has no con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to ter­mi­nate Pas­call’s elect­ed man­date by means of a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion. The re­lease em­pha­sised that any at­tempt to re­move him or de­clare the of­fice va­cant was “of no force or ef­fect,” and in­struct­ed mem­bers to recog­nise Pas­call’s con­tin­u­ing sta­tus as chair­man.

TU­CO fur­ther not­ed that the gen­er­al coun­cil had de­ter­mined that the pur­port­ed vote of no con­fi­dence lacked con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty and could not re­move the du­ly elect­ed chair­man.

TU­CO as­sis­tant pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Sher­ma Orr Watkins, added: “In keep­ing with our TU­CO pol­i­cy at all of our mem­ber­ship meet­ings, on­ly fi­nan­cial mem­bers of the zone can par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions of this meet­ing.”