Gail Alexan­der

The Peo­ple's Band was a mas­sive flop and an­oth­er waste of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey," PNM MP Amery Browne has said. He added in a state­ment yes­ter­day, "This seemed to be sim­ply an ini­tia­tive that al­lowed the PM and a few of her close sup­port­ers the abil­i­ty to pa­rade on the street and on stage us­ing over a mil­lion dol­lars from the trea­sury." Punch­ing holes in the Gov­ern­ment's boast of a suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val 2011, Browne added: "Un­for­tu­nate­ly the Prime Min­is­ter and some se­nior mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment chose to treat this Car­ni­val sea­son as sim­ply an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for pub­lic re­la­tions and ad­vance­ment of their per­son­al im­ages." "Many per­sons were of­fend­ed by the lack of sub­tle­ty in their ap­proach, and min­is­ters were un­for­tu­nate­ly booed at sev­er­al events."

Browne said: "There was the un­prece­dent­ed de­vel­op­ment of se­nior Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters an­nounc­ing who they want­ed to be vic­to­ri­ous at the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion with $2 mil­lion at stake, with ap­pear­ances by one min­is­ter in the mu­sic video of the even­tu­al win­ner." "Most cit­i­zens agree that there was an un­ac­cept­able de­gree of politi­ci­sa­tion of this event." He added: "The prospect of the re­turn of the Sa­van­nah stage was keen­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed by many per­sons af­ter it was an­nounced, but af­ter the ac­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence of Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, that an­tic­i­pa­tion turned to dis­ap­point­ment as the wait­ing time for some bands to get on­to the stage was over 4 hours." "Even per­sons in the Band of the Year are now vow­ing not to re­turn to the stage be­cause of poor plan­ning and man­age­ment."

Browne said Gov­ern­ment's park­ing and traf­fic man­age­ment plans did not pro­duce the de­sired re­sults,

"And we still have not had a sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tion for the ar­bi­trary de­ci­sion to raise bus fares for com­muters dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od. There were al­so many com­plaints of very poor route-choic­es this year, re­sult­ing in con­ges­tion and greater dis­tress to ven­dors." Browne added, "The fact that over a dozen per­sons were killed dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od helps us to gauge the val­ue of the Gov­ern­ment's promis­es of safe­ty to cit­i­zens." (GA)