Dear Editor,
I have noted the repeated claims by Stabroek News in its columns of Monday and Tuesday 25th and 26th February claiming that at my post Cabinet press briefing, I said the judges of the Mash Calypso competition breached the rules.
Editor, what I said is a matter of public record and I challenge the Editor of Stabroek News to document such an utterance being made by me.
I made no such claim and I contend that the records would support a rejection of Stabroek News’s claims and provide for a deserved apology.
Yours faithfully,
Roger F Luncheon
Secretary to the Cabinet
Office of the President
Editor’s note
In SN’s story of February 25 (repeated on February 26) it was reported that “Dr Luncheon… noted that the judges in the calypso competition were given criteria and these were breached.” This portion of the report was based on the following remarks by the Cabinet Secretary, which we recorded and which Dr Luncheon also appended to his letter: “… we repose quite a bit of confidence in the judges. Two there is a code that is given to all of the calypsonians to which one would expect them to adhere. The judges are there to ensure that adherence takes place. It would be invidious of me to second guess the judges, who apparently allowed these renditions to become part of the calypso competition and the one of which I assume you are speaking is actually that of the calypso monarch. This is what I was told… that this, man, calypsonian won the competition. This is the judges’ call. It is the resort of the lack of, to the rules, regulations that deal with content and I suspect that this is the road that we will end up when we finish doing some inquiries whether, here are the rules, the judges apply the rules, is the outcome consistent with the rules?”
Dr Luncheon’s words are ambiguous and unclear, and while the implication in the first part of the quotation seems to be that the calypsonians breached the code (SN rendered this word as ‘criteria’ not ‘rules’) it is not unreasonable to read him as saying further that despite this, the judges, who are there to “ensure adherence” still allowed “the renditions” to go through, although he was not prepared to speculate on their reasons.
The meaning of the remainder, however, is somewhat opaque.
Technically speaking, the Cabinet Secretary did not say that the judges had breached the “code” and we express our regret for having reported that he did.
It has to be observed that Dr Luncheon’s circumlocutions are legendary, more particularly when he is asked to respond to a question put to him by a reporter. After many years of this, one is forced to the conclusion that sometimes his verbiage is not intended to convey information, but to avoid questions or quite simply to obfuscate issues.
