BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ORGANISER of the Shiggidy Shack Small Axe Buccaneers Gregory Warner has weighed in on the recent J’Ouvert Troupe controversy and expressed that the fault may have originated with Red Devils themselves.
It was previously announced that Xtreme Nation won Best J’Ouvert Troupe for Sugar Mas 44 and was followed by Shiggidy Shack and GM Addix respectively.
The Carnival Committee has since informed that an error of omission occurred where a judge, not recognising that the Masquerade Devils and the Red Devils were one and the same, did not assign any scores to Red Devils but created a section for Masquerade Devils and placed the score there.
This, among other things, led to a review of the scores and the Carnival Committee later announced that the Red Devils are indeed the winners, which caused a downward shift in placement of all the other winners.
Warner, in an interview with SKNVibes, explained that he was invited to a meeting on Monday evening (Jan. 11) with the Carnival Committee, where he learnt of the situation. He said he was one of three individuals who expressed dissatisfaction with what had taken place and took the decision to leave the meeting.
He explained that careful analysis of the situation showed that the fiasco might have been avoided if the Red Devils had properly registered.
“The meeting was called and Ivor Blake started saying they had a problem where one of the judges had a problem with the scoring. He did not score a particular troupe and he said that troupe was Red Devils and the reason for him not scoring Red Devils because the judge said on the score sheet he saw the name Red Devils, but when the troupes came down he did not see anything saying Red Devils. What he saw was a troupe by the name Masquerade Devils.
“That judge judged Masquerade Devils separately to Red Devils and, in my opinion, that judge did the right thing because that was an error on Red Devil’s behalf. They were improperly registered or incompletely registered, because they didn’t say Red Devils going by the theme Masquerade Devils or whatever. As far as I see, they registered as Red Devils and they came down as Masquerade Devils; totally two different things. And then the judge judged accordingly. My opinion is he did the right thing. That’s a good judge!”
Warner opined that the Carnival Committee should have taken into considered that the Red Devils registered “improperly” or “incompletely”, which is what may have led to this controversy.
“The results came out saying Red Devils didn’t (place)...and then when they came down to the nitty-gritty they realised this is what happened. Whose fault is it? You can’t come 14 days after and say give them the points and then move them to first. The points should have stayed as they were.”
Warner has suggested that rather overturning the results of the auditors and judges, the Carnival Committee should have met with all J’Ouvert troupes and ask for their opinion on what action to be taken.
He said a suggestion was made to the Carnival Committee that even if the Red Devils is given the first place monetary reward, the announcement of the original winners should stand.
The Shiggidy Shack Small Axe Buccaneers organiser said he also takes issue with the fact that no scores were given or announced concerning the J’Ouvert Troupe competition prior to the controversy, insinuating that to be fed scores while the storm was brewing did very little to satisfy the troupes’ suspicions.
“First of all, we did not get any scores and all of a sudden you want to present scores after you made these changes. Nobody knows what the scores were before all of this. So how come you want to come now and present scores to us? I am not interested, because in the first place we can’t even see what the change is because we did not know the scores before. All these judge sheets were in the Carnival Committee’s position. Anything could have been tampered with after the fact because we did not know what the scores were before…”
Obviously concerned over the matter, Warner declared that the Carnival Committee made a “bad decision” in changing the results and, in essence, it removed the judging responsibility from the judges and took it upon themselves.
