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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

NCBA head: Too much political interference

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20140304

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA), David Lopez yes­ter­day com­plained that there was too much po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in Car­ni­val 2014.He even ac­cused a se­nior politi­cian of try­ing to run the car­ni­val pro­gramme af­ter an agree­ment was reached by all stake­hold­ers.Lopez spoke with re­porters yes­ter­day af­ter­noon as sev­er­al bands were set to cross the Queens Park Sa­van­nah stage yes­ter­day.

"This year was the most chal­leng­ing year for me," Lopez in­sist­ed. Ad­mit­ting that there has been po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in pre­vi­ous years, Lopez said it nev­er reached the lev­el it reached in 2014.He said if such lev­els of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence were to con­tin­ue in the fu­ture the T&T Car­ni­val would be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.Lopez said the politi­cian at­tempt­ed to make changes to the route for the Pa­rade of the Bands, af­ter the stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), NC­BA and the po­lice, agreed to the route.

"Well, come on, if that is go­ing to hap­pen then you don't need a NCC," Lopez said yes­ter­day, adding that the NC­BA was pre­pared to work with the state with re­spect to the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments for Car­ni­val. "If you get­ting in­volved in the in­ter­nal busi­ness it will on­ly con­tin­ue to di­vide the car­ni­val," Lopez stressed, adding, Car­ni­val 2014 was "the most chal­leng­ing for me and my or­gan­i­sa­tion."

He al­so de­scribed as "amaz­ing" a de­ci­sion by the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for the new and con­tro­ver­sial venue for bands this year, the So­cadrome at the Jean Pierre Com­plex.

Ac­cord­ing to Lopez, the NC­BA was told re­peat­ed­ly, in pre­vi­ous years, that there was not enough po­lice to pa­trol any pro­posed ex­tend­ed route for Pa­rade of the Bands but this year "just so, the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice find man­pow­er to man­age the So­cadrome." He said he want­ed to know what sig­nals were be­ing sent to the chil­dren of the na­tion as the rules were be­ing in­fringed."Is the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice a politi­cian?" Lopez asked.

He said T&T was the home of the re­al Car­ni­val and had the ca­pac­i­ty to ex­port and not im­port cos­tumes for Car­ni­val.The coun­try was los­ing the de­sign­ers, wire-ben­ders grad­u­al­ly, he said, "while we con­tin­ue to play pol­i­tics."Ex­press­ing the hope that the coun­try will get it right, Lopez main­tained the lev­el of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence must be dis­con­tin­ued for the na­tion­al fes­ti­val to ad­vance.

Ac­cord­ing to Lopez the Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide ad­e­quate fund­ing to the Car­ni­val in­ter­est groups, which in turn must al­so be able to make the event fi­nan­cial­ly prof­itable. He said the pro­vi­sion of more than $100 mil­lion by the Gov­ern­ment for Car­ni­val this year was for the con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers. Lopez said the fo­cus must be on the in­dus­try year round, adding that the Car­ni­val cos­tumes must be placed in a mu­se­um.

He said the turnout of spec­ta­tors in the sa­van­nah was nor­mal, in­clud­ing 200 cruise ship pas­sen­gers who were in the sa­van­nah to wit­ness the pa­rade of the bands.


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