O’Connor’s attorney to file injunction today

JOAN RAMPERSAD

AFTER being verbally told that the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation (TUCO) was not going to budge from their position of not including Duane O’Connor in the National Calypso Monarch final to come off on Dimanche Gras night on Sunday, the calypsonian’s attorney Keith Beckles is expected to file an injunction this morning to stop the event until he is included.

Beckles had written to TUCO on Tuesday evening and received a response from attorney Marlon Moore acting on behalf of the organisation’s president Lutalo Masimba, also known as Bro Resistance.

Moore said an adjudication review committee, chaired by Justice Malcolm Holdip and including Selwyn James, Neville Brown and Hamidulah Wahid, met on Tuesday after protestations from O’Connor the same morning, and considered all the points raised by him.

O’Connor complained that his mark under the melody category was changed from 28 to 25 by one of the judges. This, he said, put him at a disadvantage which resulted in him being left out of the final.

Moore said the committee interviewed the judge in question who said there was never any change of the score but a clarification of the figure. The judge, he said, confirmed the score given for melody was in fact 25 and not 28.

The judge explained that he first tried to rewrite the figure ‘5’ over the existing ‘5’ but then decided to cross out the entire figure 25 and write it above what existed for better clarification and initialled same.

However in a subsequent letter, Beckles said if there was never any change in score, it would have been reflected in the committee’s minutes of their deliberation, consistent with TUCO’s own rules.