Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), Ains­ley King, has dis­missed con­cerns raised by two mem­bers as part of a smear cam­paign ahead of next year’s elec­tions.

King told Guardian Me­dia that the is­sues raised by ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Er­rol “Bal­ly” Bal­lan­tyne and Roger “Body­guard” Mo­hammed are in­ter­nal mat­ters that should have been ad­dressed with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at Kaiso Blues, Wright­son Road, yes­ter­day, Bal­lan­tyne and Mo­hammed called on Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin to in­ter­vene and ini­ti­ate a foren­sic au­dit. They re­it­er­at­ed con­cerns over ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers al­leged­ly be­ing paid hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars for not per­form­ing in this year’s ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions.