Mangaroo denies claims of board rift over Blue Waters sponsorship

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Claims of in­ter­nal dis­agree­ments are emerg­ing with­in the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) over its han­dling of spon­sor­ship arrange­ments for Di­vali Na­gar 2026, amid con­cerns by some board mem­bers that the de­ci­sion to bring Blue Wa­ters on board could be per­ceived as a po­lit­i­cal state­ment against the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The con­tro­ver­sy has re­port­ed­ly caused fric­tion among board mem­bers, with con­cerns raised about the po­ten­tial reper­cus­sions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pub­lic han­dling of its spon­sor­ship arrange­ments and the im­pact on re­la­tion­ships with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment.

One ap­point­ed board mem­ber ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion this week, al­though Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that work com­mit­ments were cit­ed as the of­fi­cial rea­son for her de­par­ture.

How­ev­er, NCIC pres­i­dent Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo is strong­ly deny­ing sug­ges­tions of in­ter­nal tur­moil or po­lit­i­cal mo­tives, in­sist­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­mains unit­ed and that Blue Wa­ters was ap­proached for spon­sor­ship months be­fore the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands, how­ev­er, that con­cerns have been raised with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion about the de­ci­sion to pub­licly high­light Blue Wa­ters’ spon­sor­ship against the back­drop of the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent deal­ings with the com­pa­ny’s own­er, Do­minic Hadeed, and his wife Genevieve.

The spon­sor­ship comes months af­ter the Hadeeds were ar­rest­ed un­der State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions in con­nec­tion with an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials. They were re­leased near­ly a month lat­er with­out charge and have de­nied the al­le­ga­tions.

One in­di­vid­ual fa­mil­iar with in­ter­nal NCIC dis­cus­sions al­leged that the Di­a­mond Spon­sor arrange­ment, re­port­ed­ly val­ued at $250,000, could be seen as a po­lit­i­cal mes­sage to the Prime Min­is­ter.

Con­cerns were al­so re­port­ed­ly raised in­ter­nal­ly that the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ac­tions could ad­verse­ly af­fect in­di­vid­ual board mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly their pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ships, ca­reer ad­vance­ment and fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties in­volv­ing the Gov­ern­ment.

Those con­cerns, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands, were not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s lead­er­ship.

Amid the re­port­ed dis­agree­ments, Guardian Me­dia has been in­formed that ap­point­ed board mem­ber Feri­da Ramkissoon re­signed this week.

A per­son fa­mil­iar with the cir­cum­stances al­leged that her de­par­ture was con­nect­ed to dis­sat­is­fac­tion with how the spon­sor­ship con­tro­ver­sy was be­ing han­dled and con­cerns about its po­ten­tial pro­fes­sion­al con­se­quences.

An­oth­er source fa­mil­iar with the NCIC’s in­ter­nal af­fairs al­so point­ed to frus­tra­tion among some ap­point­ed mem­bers, sug­gest­ing there were grow­ing con­cerns about be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with de­ci­sions per­ceived as an­tag­o­nis­tic to­wards the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

An at­tempt to get a com­ment from Ramkissoon yes­ter­day was un­suc­cess­ful.

An­oth­er ap­point­ed mem­ber, Var­sha Ramharak, al­so re­signed sev­er­al weeks ago, but there is no es­tab­lished con­nec­tion be­tween her de­par­ture and the cur­rent spon­sor­ship con­tro­ver­sy.

Man­ga­roo yes­ter­day con­firmed the de­par­tures of two ap­point­ed mem­bers but main­tained that both res­ig­na­tions had noth­ing to do with Blue Wa­ters or any spon­sor­ship is­sues.

He said Ramkissoon had in­di­cat­ed as ear­ly as Oc­to­ber 10 that she was con­sid­er­ing re­sign­ing be­cause of work com­mit­ments.

“And the same thing she said then, she said it now, it was be­cause of her work com­mit­ments.”

He stressed that all elect­ed board mem­bers re­mained in place and that the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ued to func­tion nor­mal­ly.

Asked di­rect­ly about claims of in­ter­nal dis­agree­ments over the NCIC’s han­dling of spon­sor­ship, Man­ga­roo in­sist­ed he was un­aware of any di­vi­sion.

“I am not aware of any dis­agree­ment. We all sat down last night,” he said.

The NCIC pres­i­dent al­so re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that the Di­a­mond Spon­sor arrange­ment with Blue Wa­ters was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“We are not a po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion. We are a cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tion. What­ev­er hap­pened to pol­i­tics out­side, it doesn’t mat­ter to us.”

Man­ga­roo said the NCIC had sub­mit­ted a Di­a­mond Spon­sor pro­pos­al to Blue Wa­ters since Ju­ly, along­side ap­proach­es to oth­er pri­vate com­pa­nies and State en­ter­pris­es.

He al­so dis­put­ed claims that the Di­a­mond Spon­sor cat­e­go­ry was spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed for Blue Wa­ters, main­tain­ing it ex­ist­ed pre­vi­ous­ly.

Asked whether the spon­sor­ship was worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly $250,000, Man­ga­roo de­clined to dis­close the fig­ure.

“Well, it varies de­pend­ing on who is ask­ing and what they choose to be their di­a­mond spon­sor­ship. Oth­er­wise, I wouldn’t want to dis­cuss that.”

The in­ter­nal dis­pute al­le­ga­tions come against the back­drop of spon­sor­ship with­drawals by sev­er­al State-linked com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing bmo­bile, First Cit­i­zens Bank and Na­tion­al Flour Mills, which have placed ad­di­tion­al at­ten­tion on the NCIC’s fund­ing arrange­ments.

Ques­tions are al­so emerg­ing over whether Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters will par­tic­i­pate in this year’s cel­e­bra­tions.

One source claimed that Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo were no longer ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate, while un­cer­tain­ty re­mained over Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin’s at­ten­dance.

How­ev­er, Man­ga­roo said he had not re­ceived of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion that the in­vit­ed min­is­ters were with­draw­ing.

He con­firmed in­vi­ta­tions were ex­tend­ed to Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, the Prime Min­is­ter and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on both sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide.

De­spite the con­tro­ver­sy, Man­ga­roo main­tained there was no po­lit­i­cal agen­da be­hind the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s de­ci­sions.

“We are hope­ful. We are very hope­ful that good sense will pre­vail,” he said.