ORIGINAL SOURCE

SOCA artiste Neil "Iwer" George has no one but himself to blame for his second-place finish in Friday's Power Soca Monarch competition, the show's organiser, William Munro, has said.

"Iwer has to blame himself (for not winning). Iwer has to understand he didn't obey the rules of the competition. He can't blame anybody; he has to blame himself," Munro said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Machel Montano won the competition's $2 million first prize by three points more than George, Munro, founder of Caribbean Prestige Foundation (CPF), said. Ian "Bunji Garlin" Alvarez was third, one point behind George, and Fay-Ann Lyons-Alvarez was fourth, ten points behind Montano, Munro said, although he noted he could not recall the exact tally of points for each artiste.

Montano was named the winner around 5.30 a.m. on Saturday, at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port of Spain. However, hundreds of patrons, who felt George should have won, booed in response to the announcement.

Yesterday, however, Munro said, "George bullied the backstage. He listened to nobody. He had too many people on stage, and he stayed on stage too long. He beat himself."

Artistes were allocated eight minutes stage time for their performance, Munro said. Montano performed for 12 minutes while George performed for 14 minutes. The rules state an artiste can only have 25 props on stage during their performance, Munro added.

"Iwer had 40 to 50 people on stage with him," Munro said.

The head of security for the Power Soca Monarch, who requested anonymity, described George's behaviour backstage as "despicable".

"The artistes need to learn to conduct themselves properly. George's behaviour was despicable. He had no discipline whatsoever. This is one of the things that must be highlighted; George's behaviour was despicable," the security head said.

"When someone is seated in a judging position, it is completely different from when they are in the crowd jumping and waving," Munro noted.

In a telephone interview yesterday, George declined to comment on the accusations levelled by Munro.

"I do not wish to comment on Munro's statement. I prefer to remain quiet because right now, the people are talking for me and when the people are talking, you can't interrupt them. When the people have stopped talking for me, then I will say what I have to say," George said.

Judges allocated 80 per cent of the points while text messages from bmobile customers contributed to the remaining 20 per cent of the points used to decide the winner of the competition.

Contacted on the voting by text messages, Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) manager Media Relations and Corporation Communications Graeme Suite said Montano received more text messages than George, Alvarez and Lyons-Alvarez combined. Montano received close to 17,000 of the 50,000 text messages received for the Power Soca Monarch finals while George got just over 7,500 text messages.

On Sunday, chief adjudicator Roy Edwards defended their choice of Montano as the winner.

"We did the best that we could do. And I stand by the choice that Mr Montano was the winner of the competition after we tallied the votes," Edwards said.

Edwards, Josephine Torrel-Taylor, Carlyle Babb, John Barry, Carl "Beaver" Henderson, Marcia Miranda, Joel Morris, Marva Newton and Christopher Seon were this year's judges.

Complete and utter lies. Superblue brought 50+ people on stage for many soca monarch performances and won.

Complete and utter lies. Superblue brought 50+ people on stage for many soca monarch performances and won.

Well this is definitely a SLAP to the face to all the ppl that bawling machel thief yes...that's y ppl can't come to conclusions just so without hearing the next side..I wonder what iwer have to say to defend that..man was clearly breaking rules which I noticed even before this article release hmmph smh

U believe dat???

So y did he get 2nd place then..as opposed to last?

The judges don't see what goes on backstage, so why is this coming as a comment from the individual who hosted the show. Mr. Munroe needs to temper himself. From his comments it only appears that one artist got sanctioned for not follwing the rules, one got away with it and actually won the competition. This is terrible on the part of a promoter of such a show, this is one of those go tek dat moments.

Well this is definitely a SLAP to the face to all the ppl that bawling machel thief yes...that's y ppl can't come to conclusions just so without hearing the next side..I wonder what iwer have to say to defend that..man was clearly breaking rules which I noticed even before this article release hmmph smh

Artistes were allocated eight minutes stage time for their performance, Munro said. Montano performed for 12 minutes while George performed for 14 minutes. The rules state an artiste can only have 25 props on stage during their performance, Munro added.

U believe dat???

So y did he get 2nd place then..as opposed to last?

Well this is definitely a SLAP to the face to all the ppl that bawling machel thief yes...that's y ppl can't come to conclusions just so without hearing the next side..I wonder what iwer have to say to defend that..man was clearly breaking rules which I noticed even before this article release hmmph smh

i havent responded to any monarch/post monarch thread..... until now at least.... but i noticed a lot of biasness in these threads.... Some people have favorite artist and thats great, we all do.... but some of you need to really take de yampee out ya eyes, and see things for what they really are.....

Yeah so machel didn't break any right? My girl I don't know you personally but don't make Munro turn you into an ass nuh. Why don't they say how many texts came before the performances since 20% is a significan alotment for votes that are allowed some nearly 16 hours before? Why was Iwer only 3 points behind Machel for these serious violations? Why has this not factored in, in the past when various other winners especially Super Blue had an abundance of "props" on the stage? SLAP in the face to who? Only the rabid jackasses that call themselves fans of MM will see this as an even remotely plausible explanation. The reality is this is all part of a bigger ploy to Market Machel Montano commercially as the face of Carnival. You can't vigorously market your 2nd place finisher as the reason to visit can you? No one else was ever going to win this competition no matter how overwhelmingly blatant it was that they should have triumphed. Other than Montano fans it don't have many who attended that even remotely see Machel as being worthy of winning. I'm sure all the foreigners who watched on the internet swear they understood clearly what happened though. Afterall machel was their champ since 8:01 am on Fantastic Friday.