TUCO quells Road March rumours; vows post-Carnival review

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King has moved to quell grow­ing anx­i­eties sur­round­ing the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son, dis­miss­ing so­cial me­dia “mis­in­for­ma­tion” about Road March rules and promis­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s judg­ing process­es.

Speak­ing at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah VIP lounge yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the Road March win­ners, King ad­dressed al­le­ga­tions re­gard­ing a “pur­port­ed clause” that al­leged­ly re­strict­ed how con­tes­tants could ap­pear at judg­ing points.

He was adamant that while a new rule book ex­ists, it does not con­tain the re­stric­tive mea­sures sug­gest­ed by some com­men­ta­tors.

Ru­mours had cir­cu­lat­ed that con­tes­tants were lim­it­ed in the fre­quen­cy or du­ra­tion of their ap­pear­ances at judg­ing posts to pre­vent “padding” the count.

“There is a new rule book, [but] that does not ap­ply, so a con­tes­tant could ap­pear in the judg­ing area or at a judg­ing post at any time, for any du­ra­tion,” King stat­ed.

In a fol­low-up Face­book post, TU­CO re­it­er­at­ed that the win­ner is de­ter­mined by the song reg­is­tered for the com­pe­ti­tion that is played the high­est to­tal num­ber of times, with­out rep­e­ti­tion, dur­ing the agreed pe­ri­od.

Sec­tion 37.0 of the rules out­lines strict tab­u­la­tion pro­ce­dures at all des­ig­nat­ed venues. The or­gan­i­sa­tion urged the pub­lic and me­dia to dis­re­gard “un­ver­i­fied in­ter­pre­ta­tions,” warn­ing that such claims could cre­ate un­nec­es­sary con­fu­sion among com­peti­tors and fans.

The 2026 sea­son has al­so been marked by tech­ni­cal and po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies. King ac­knowl­edged the need to ad­dress pub­lic con­cerns.

State-owned broad­cast­er Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) is­sued a for­mal apol­o­gy af­ter au­dio was lost for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 min­utes dur­ing a per­for­mance by for­mer Ca­lyp­so Monarch Helon Fran­cis. The dis­rup­tion oc­curred as Fran­cis per­formed “Doh For­get,” a song fea­tur­ing sharp so­cial and po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary.

The in­ci­dent sparked a po­lit­i­cal de­bate. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­nied any at­tempt to cen­sor ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, dis­miss­ing claims as “con­spir­a­cies” and “hate­ful di­a­tribes” from po­lit­i­cal ac­tors. Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young de­scribed the au­dio drop as “dis­turb­ing at min­i­mum and cen­sor­ship, akin to dic­ta­tor­ship at the next lev­el,” ques­tion­ing why it co­in­cid­ed with Fran­cis’s most crit­i­cal lyrics.

In re­sponse to the con­tro­ver­sy and cen­sor­ship al­le­ga­tions, King as­sured stake­hold­ers that TU­CO is lis­ten­ing and will con­duct a post-Car­ni­val re­view.

“We are go­ing to be re­view­ing a lot of stuff — the judg­ing and all that. We heard them,” King said.

“We are far away from it, but we heard them, and we are go­ing to re­view and try to make sure that next time we are in a bet­ter place.”