The original composer of the song Count on me Singapore has written a letter of demand to Joey Mendoza and Pauline Communication. It is believed that Joey Mendoza sold the rights of the song “we can achieve” to the company.
An Indian called Caroline Duia even made the statement that Hugh Harrison could be lying to Singapore about composing the song.
She then stated that the words and the song is different as well.
Mr Mendoza, 58, said that he wrote the song in April 1983 and taught it to children from the Bal Bhavan Orphanage in Mumbai where he is based.
They rehearsed for a month before performing it on May 1 that year during an annual gathering of children from different orphanages, he said.
“We shared the song with many teachers and institutions,” Mr Mendoza, who is also known as Joey, told TODAY in an email.*
“The children in remote villages all sing We Can Achieve,” he said, adding that he travels around the country to teach music and sports to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Asked for evidence, he said: “Whatever data I had on the performance has gone missing since all cassettes and written (documents) were all washed away in the floods of July 26, 2005.”*
In 1999, he sold the rights to the song to a Catholic publishing house Pauline Communications for what he claimed to be a nominal sum of 2,000 rupees (about S$37).
The publishing house then released the track as part of a CD called We Can Achieve — Inspirational Songs for Children and All in 1999. It also uploaded the song to music-sharing platform SoundCloud in 2012, which it has now removed.
In a Facebook post last Sunday evening, Pauline Communications said that when it bought the song from Mr Mendoza, it was unaware that a similar song was used in Singapore’s 1986 National Day celebrations.