00:00Two co-employees, Samantha Richards, who describes herself as a road-march judge, seemed willing
00:06and elated to share with one media company her findings from the Southern Academy of
00:12the Performing Arts judging point on Carnival Tuesday.
00:16Marshall is in the league right now, Bonjie Gallen right behind him, so we're looking
00:23forward to wrapping up and delivering that great news to you all as to who would be the
00:30road-march champion this year, but his smile is looking like it's Marshall's.
00:34So I also got news from someone from Port-au-Prince that he's also up there.
00:40So the people seem to be loving the party.
00:43And honestly, you know, I like it.
00:47A bit too open and unprofessional, says past road-march winner, Fayan Lyons.
00:53Fayan addressed the matter by resharing the video, questioning if the public can really
00:58trust the results.
01:00She asks, are these judges?
01:02If so, OK, what level of madness is this?
01:05I've been around this competition for years, never seen nor heard judges discussing results
01:11prematurely, and further to state, you've been getting information from other places
01:16and putting it in the public domain before a proper audit or tally is done is the level of off.
01:24And after a day of revelry on the road, Fayan posted this video to her social media,
01:30indicating the Soka duo's intention to step away from competitions going forward.
01:36We've decided that the competition sector is no longer something that's attractive to us.
01:45The integrity, the way things are being done, the people that they're putting to do things
01:52that they have to do, it's very uncomfortable and unsettling to us.
01:58So in light of that, we have decided to step away.
02:03And we hope that you will do better because you'll have younger artists coming up.
02:10And if you already care about culture, then the manner in which you present the culture
02:16moving forward should be of the utmost importance.
02:19And discipline is a big part of it, as well as transparency, accountability, honesty,
02:30and most important, integrity, which seem to be in a deficit right now.
02:37Clearly aware of the sentiments expressed by Fayan, Tuko issued a statement early on Wednesday morning
02:43clarifying that the employee in question was in fact a tabulator and not a judge.
02:48Tuko says, quote, Tuko has since relieved the tabulator in question of her official duties
02:54and wishes to assure the public that the results of the road march competition are based purely on statistics,
03:02being the number of times a song is played when bands cross the stage at various judging points, end quote.
03:08The organization did not indicate at which point the woman was sacked,
03:13though saying the opinion she expressed was irrelevant to the results.
03:18The organization said the integrity of the road march competition is sacrosanct to it.
03:24When the results were tallied, Marshall Montano's party surpassed Bungie Garland's carriot by only 14 plays.
03:31Industry sources, however, say the damage may have already been done.
03:36They say it's impossible to determine if the tabulator had it right all along,
03:41if plays tabulated were influenced by her opinion, or if her publicly aired comments influenced public opinion.
03:50Tuko head honcho Ainsley King spoke to the incident at today's announcement of the road march results.
03:56There was a breach in our code of conduct, right?
04:00We have dealt with that. It was surprising for us, but we sincerely apologize for the development, right?
04:07But we are going to put things in place to make sure that that doesn't reoccur.
04:14But I think that they were briefed, so what else could we do?
04:21Because they received a brief, and that still took place, right?
04:27So we'll just have to make sure that we have the right people.
04:32He assures there's no mafia in the road march, which is simply, according to King, a count of the plays a song receives.
04:41Arvashid Tewari, Rub-na-Roy and TV6 News.
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