Controversy at Dimanche Gras: Helon Francis challenges TTT over audio loss; PM denies censorship

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment has plead­ed “no cen­sor­ship”, and state-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) has apol­o­gised to view­ers for the loss of au­dio dur­ing for­mer Ca­lyp­so Monarch Helon Fran­cis’s per­for­mance at Sun­day’s Di­manche Gras show—but Fran­cis is not con­vinced.

“It’s rather co­in­ci­den­tal that some­thing like that could have hap­pened while a song that speaks to the same thing is be­ing per­formed,” Fran­cis said yes­ter­day.

This fol­lows queries from TTT view­ers of Sun­day’s show about why Fran­cis could not be heard dur­ing his per­for­mance.

Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young al­so called out the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day, ques­tion­ing al­leged cen­sor­ship.

Fran­cis’s con­tri­bu­tion had been high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed, as he was de­fend­ing the ti­tle he won in 2025 with To Whom It May Be. He al­so won the ti­tle in 2018 with Change. Sun­day’s com­pe­ti­tion would have been the de­but of his 2026 of­fer­ing Don’t For­get.

How­ev­er, min­utes in­to Fran­cis’s per­for­mance, he could not be heard on the TTT broad­cast, al­though he could be seen per­form­ing. When au­dio re­turned, the host of the TTT pro­gramme, Wendy Lewis, apol­o­gised but did not ex­plain why Fran­cis’s au­dio had not been trans­mit­ted.

Yes­ter­day, Young said there have been se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of in­ter­fer­ence ground­ed in cen­sor­ship in the 2026 Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion: “With ca­lyp­so­ni­ans whose songs pro­vid­ed tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary be­ing mys­te­ri­ous­ly elim­i­nat­ed from pro­gress­ing to the fi­nals at Di­manche Gras.

“What we wit­nessed dur­ing Helon Fran­cis’s per­for­mance, with a sud­den loss of au­dio on the state-run TTT live tele­vi­sion feed, was dis­turb­ing at min­i­mum and cen­sor­ship, akin to dic­ta­tor­ship, at the next lev­el.”

Young al­so cit­ed is­sues with a WACK 90.1 FM livestream. He added, “The UNC Gov­ern­ment can­not cen­sor our free speech and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights to en­gage in po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary, in­clud­ing crit­i­cism of their abysmal lack of prop­er gov­er­nance … cen­sor­ship has no place in T&T.

“The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment’s record since May 1, 2025, is in­dica­tive of dan­ger­ous signs of dic­ta­tor­ship. We will not sit qui­et­ly and idly by, al­low­ing the UNC to use and abuse state re­sources and in­sti­tu­tions to cen­sor our free speech, ex­pres­sion and cul­ture,” Young added, con­grat­u­lat­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin told Guardian Me­dia that tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties at TTT caused the lack of au­dio and said it was not in­ten­tion­al. “It didn’t af­fect the judg­ing, but it was sad that it hap­pened,” Ben­jamin added.

TTT sub­se­quent­ly is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day say­ing, “TTT Ltd sin­cere­ly apol­o­gis­es to view­ers for the au­dio in­ter­rup­tion that oc­curred dur­ing Helon Fran­cis’s per­for­mance of the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals on Sun­day night at the Di­manche Gras.

“We un­der­stand how im­por­tant this mo­ment was for the artiste and for the many view­ers at home, and we re­gret that the broad­cast was dis­rupt­ed. At no time did TTT pur­pose­ful­ly cut the au­dio but rather ex­pe­ri­enced a Dante sys­tem fail­ure.

“En­gi­neers and au­dio tech­ni­cians suc­cess­ful­ly re­stored the sig­nal at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10.45 pm, en­sur­ing the re­main­der of the Di­manche Gras pre­sen­ta­tion con­tin­ued with­out fur­ther in­ci­dent. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­cause the is­sue oc­curred at the au­dio source, there was no clean record­ing avail­able, which meant we were un­able to pro­vide an im­me­di­ate play­back of the per­for­mance as has been done dur­ing such events.”

The state­ment sum­marised the in­ci­dent but did not specif­i­cal­ly apol­o­gise to Fran­cis.

Yes­ter­day, Fran­cis told Guardian Me­dia that he had been un­aware that his com­po­si­tion was not be­ing heard by peo­ple out­side of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. “It was on­ly when I came off the stage that peo­ple told me what hap­pened. But in truth, it’s not some­thing one couldn’t have seen com­ing.

“No one is blind. It’s very easy to see what hap­pened. And I al­so have to say it’s rather co­in­ci­den­tal that some­thing like that could have hap­pened while a song that speaks to the same thing is be­ing per­formed,” Fran­cis added.

“Every­one can see what hap­pened. So no—I’m not con­vinced. But I’ll con­tin­ue to be some­one who will ex­press the views which speak the peo­ple’s truth to the pow­ers. It doesn’t mat­ter who is in pow­er and what the sit­u­a­tion is.

“That’s what I’m sup­posed to do. No one is im­mune. It doesn’t mat­ter who it is. My job is to re­port the feel­ings and the essence of the coun­try, to bring per­spec­tives that I de­tect,” Fran­cis added.

“There should be no rea­son for my abil­i­ty as a ca­lyp­son­ian to be chal­lenged—it shouldn’t be that way. There are rea­sons why a gov­ern­ment has an op­po­si­tion, and that is to bal­ance the scales and chal­lenge what­ev­er nar­ra­tive may be put for­ward. That’s their job.

“The job of a ca­lyp­son­ian is to con­vey the mes­sages. You’re not sup­posed to have to think twice or hes­i­tate about what you’re go­ing to say,” he said.

He felt that a num­ber of con­tes­tants in the ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion tamped down pre­sen­ta­tions this year for rea­sons be­yond him.

“A lot of great ca­lyp­so­ni­ans didn’t get in­to the fi­nals. But I’m not tak­ing away from those who com­pet­ed; they all de­served their praise. Ter­ri Lyons’s per­for­mance de­served that crown and every bit of what she got. In my case, I’m just sat­is­fied once the mes­sage was re­ceived by the pow­ers that be—and the peo­ple.”

Yes­ter­day, evening Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about the con­tro­ver­sial au­dio drop on Face­book. She de­nied there was any at­tempt to cen­sor ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

“Sor­ry to break this news to my lov­ing and ded­i­cat­ed haters but NO one has to cen­sor ca­lyp­so be­cause over the years, po­lit­i­cal stooges mas­querad­ing as ca­lyp­so­ni­ans cen­sored ca­lyp­so them­selves by alien­at­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion with their hate­ful di­a­tribes. So­ca fetes are sold out by the thou­sands every day from Jan­u­ary to Car­ni­val Tues­day but a ca­lyp­so tent can’t even sell 100 tick­ets on its best night. That’s be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens have moved on from that type of di­vi­sive­ness and neg­a­tiv­i­ty, peo­ple just want to en­joy them­selves and be hap­py.

“Singers like Ter­ri Lyons and Yung Bred­da are sav­ing the ca­lyp­so art form with songs ground­ed in so­cial con­scious­ness and re­al­i­ty. Ter­ri Lyons showed how great ca­lyp­so could be last night. Con­grat­u­la­tions Ter­ri, our beau­ti­ful 2026 ca­lyp­so queen. Her song was emo­tion­al, re­al, in­spir­ing, and uni­fy­ing. Peo­ple should cel­e­brate her vic­to­ry in­stead of chas­ing wild con­spir­a­cies to push po­lit­i­cal agen­das.”

Ear­li­er in the day, Min­is­ter in the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice Nicholas Mor­ris, who re­spond­ed af­ter Young’s post on Face­book, point­ed out that TTT’s ex­pla­na­tion added, “At no time was the au­dio in­ten­tion­al­ly or ne­far­i­ous­ly cut. This was a tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty which we’ve seen TTT ex­pe­ri­ence even be­fore this Gov­ern­ment took of­fice. In 2024, sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances oc­curred when then-op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, was ad­dress­ing the Di­vali Na­gar and TTT suf­fered tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, lead­ing to her en­tire live pre­sen­ta­tion be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed.”

Mor­ris added, “How­ev­er, an apol­o­gy must be ex­tend­ed to view­ers and, more so, to the tal­ent­ed Helon Fran­cis.”

TTT’s state­ment apol­o­gis­ing to view­ers—mi­nus men­tion of apol­o­gis­ing to Fran­cis—was is­sued at 11.10 am.

At 1.07 pm, the OPM is­sued Mor­ris’s state­ment with the ad­di­tion: “Any claim of cen­sor­ship or ne­far­i­ous ac­tion must be re­ject­ed. TTT and its man­age­ment have is­sued an apol­o­gy to view­ers, Mr Fran­cis and all those af­fect­ed.”

WACK 90.1 FM own­er Ken­ny Phillips said on Sun­day night he had re­ceived “end­less texts” that Fran­cis’s au­dio was mut­ed, and he went to WACK an­nounc­ers DJ Aaron 868 and Meguel­la Si­mon to tell them so. “We were puz­zled, we didn’t know why. Peo­ple in the Sa­van­nah were hear­ing, but our lis­ten­ers were not. I told our an­nounc­ers, as talk was go­ing around, that we ‘mut­ed the mic’. But we couldn’t do so as we weren’t in charge of the tech­ni­cal as­pects.”

On why the sta­tion’s feed lat­er went down, Phillips said it was stopped by the YouTube chan­nel the sta­tion us­es. He said that was due to “sus­pi­cious and harm­ful con­tent.”

He said, “They don’t un­der­stand what we’re do­ing cul­tur­al­ly, as the same thing hap­pened last week when they blocked our stick­fight­ing fi­nals cov­er­age. I’m hav­ing talks with YouTube for them to un­der­stand what we’re do­ing so we can put it back up.”

If yuh pol­i­tics start to look un­true

If yuh own vot­ers los­ing trust in you

You could do what you want with what in­tent too

You could bad talk the In­de­pen­dent bench­es

You could change the coun­try that we once know

But doh for­get, this is Trin­ba­go