TUCO boss hits Gypsy’s calypso events assurances

THE staging of this year's National Calypso Monarch and Extempo Monarch competitions remain in doubt even as executives from the National Carnival Commission (NCC) and the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians Organisation (TUCO) were said to be locked in a meeting on Monday evening to try and hammer out a deal.

This came after the calypso monarch preliminaries were postponed on Saturday while the extempo preliminaries were postponed on Monday.

At the crux of the matter is TUCO being given $1.5 million out of the NCC's $15 million Taste of Carnival budget, when TUCO originally asked for $2.5 million.

Its president Ainsley King said $1.5 million is not enough to stage all of TUCO's Taste of Carnival events including the calypso and extempo monarch competitions.

King also took NCC boss Winston "Gypsy" Peters to task for giving assurances, as reported in the media, that the calypso monarch competition will go ahead even as questions over its staging remained unanswered up to Monday evening.

King was asking on Monday who was really in charge of TUCO – its general council which he heads, or Gypsy?

Speaking with Newsday on Monday, King said the authority of the organisation seemed to somehow have been removed from TUCO and placed elsewhere.

“Because we hearing people say the (calypso monarch) competition is going to go on the stage (Dimanche Gras). I want to know who is really in charge of TUCO? If it is the general council or if it is, for example, the NCC chairman is now in charge of TUCO?

“You are sensing like there are mindsets (bent on) usurping authority and that is a very dangerous thing,” King said.

He added he was hearing it being said that a competition TUCO is supposed to be in charge of, is going to take place regardless of what happens.

A Sunday Newsday report quoted Gypsy saying, during an i95.5 FM radio interview, that there would be a calypso monarch prelims, semi-finals and the finals at Dimanche Gras.

“I can assure you right now that there will be calypso in A Taste of Carnival. I can give you that assurance that that will happen. It’s not that it may happen. It’s not that it may not happen...I am saying to you that it will happen.

“We will have calypso and we will have calypso in abundance the way it’s supposed to be had,” the Sunday Newsday quoted Gypsy as saying.

King said TUCO found itself in an even more difficult position where plans were made and now it was forced to halt these plans. Nevertheless, King said he remains optimistic about getting the funding needed to host the events.

“When you work out the maths, it is not like our ask is an unreasonable ask.”

He said past budgets for TUCO alone were between $7-$10 million.

King said the organisation had scaled down its plans immensely in reaching a figure of $2.5 million, cognisant of the fact that the NCC was working with a drastically reduced allocation from Government.

“The way things are happening, I think the chairman of the National Carnival Commission particularly needs to settle himself because we are not fighting against anybody...we want things to work.

“But, at the same time, I am the representative for TUCO and I have a responsibility to represent a group of intelligent people. I have to ensure I do that with passion and in the most sensible way that it can possibly be done.

“My people have to be comfortable at the end of the day and I do not want to find ourselves not being able to pay them. I have seen these things happen in the past.”

King said TUCO has a lot of debt and he did not want to add to this. He said the organisation intends to be “very calculated.”

Even though the organisation is asking for $2.5 million, it remains flexible, he added.

He said if TUCO had to cut the extempo segment to make things work, it would do that.

King said there was no time to approach sponsors as the season was short and, in any event, the NCC had allegedly blocked sponsors.

Asked to explain his claim, he said this meant that the commission was negotiating on behalf of the interest groups.

“There are a lot of mix-up things happening that not making sense. It is like we are being forced to have our hands strapped behind our backs and still expected to perform.”

King said there are eight calypso tents and he claimed Gypsy had agreed that every tent would get $150,000.

“Now when you calculate that, you will find that the tents alone run you to $1.2 million.” He said this did not take into account the calypso and extempo competitions.

He said even if the organisation went with seven tents, there would only be $450,000 left. And if the extempo competition was held, that would be the end of the Taste of Carnival allocation for TUCO.

King said while he was not playing a blame game, and understood that everyone was trying to get things happening, he nevertheless has seen “a lot of blunders made already.”

In a release on Monday, the NCC said its National Extempo preliminaries have been postponed until further notice. The event was scheduled to be held at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s.