TUCO elections to go ahead

Derek Achong

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) elec­tion, sched­uled for this Sun­day (Ju­ly 12), will go ahead as planned.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion a short while ago, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kurt Allen seek­ing to stop and de­fer the poll.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad dis­missed an ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion from Allen last week­end and came to 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 this morn­ing.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, Allen raised sev­er­al is­sues with the elec­tion, in­clud­ing not be­ing pro­vid­ed with an up-to-date mem­ber­ship list, in­clu­sive of con­tact in­for­ma­tion, or the or­gan­i­sa­tion's fi­nan­cial records over the past three years.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that Allen had an ar­guable sub­stan­tive case, he ruled that his (Allen) con­cerns were not suf­fi­cient to stop the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

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

He al­so up­held claims from TU­CO's lawyer, Umesh Ma­haraj, who claimed that a de­fer­ral of the elec­tion would de­rail the or­gan­i­sa­tion's prepa­ra­tions for next year's Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

He al­so stat­ed that the in­junc­tion would prej­u­dice oth­er can­di­dates in the elec­tion, who did not in­ter­vene in the case to raise sim­i­lar is­sues as Allen.

He al­so not­ed that TU­CO had al­ready spent $30,000 to host the elec­tion and would not be able to re­coup the funds.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that if Allen is even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in his case, the court can or­der that the elec­tion be re­done.

Deal­ing with the mem­ber­ship list, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that it was pro­vid­ed on June 29. How­ev­er, he not­ed that Allen was not en­ti­tled to mem­bers' con­tact in­for­ma­tion.

De­spite his rul­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered that Allen be pro­vid­ed with the fi­nal list of mem­bers el­i­gi­ble to vote in the elec­tion, as the cut-off date for reg­is­tra­tion was a day af­ter the list was pro­vid­ed.

Allen was rep­re­sent­ed by Blaine So­bri­an.