Kali­fa Clyne

Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers are ex­pect­ed to meet lat­er this week to dis­cuss state­ments made by Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Lin­coln Dou­glas re­gard­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion of Car­ni­val. Dur­ing Tribe mas band's launch on Sat­ur­day, Dou­glas an­nounced his in­ten­tion to in­vite ten­ders for in­di­vid­u­als or or­gan­i­sa­tions in­ter­est­ed in the pro­duc­tion of Car­ni­val.

His state­ment left not on­ly the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, but al­so stake­hold­ers in T&T's na­tion­al fes­ti­val per­plexed. Vice Pres­i­dent of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian's Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba said he wasn't quite clear on what was meant by Dou­glas. "I don't know what he means but I know sev­er­al stake­hold­ers will be meet­ing be­fore the end of the week to dis­cuss this," said Masim­ba.

Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az said he would not com­ment un­til he had met with oth­er stake­hold­ers and Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Band­lead­ers As­so­ci­a­tion chair­man David Lopez said that af­ter meet­ing with stake­hold­ers, a col­lec­tive state­ment would be made to the coun­try. The de­f­i­n­i­tion of pri­vati­sa­tion is to change some­thing from state or gov­ern­ment own­er­ship to pri­vate own­er­ship or con­trol.