Kali­fa Clyne

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA) David Lopez has warned ju­nior band­lead­ers not to stray from the des­ig­nat­ed Port-of-Spain route to­day, or they will face dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.This comes af­ter Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee on Thurs­day in­vit­ed bands in Ju­nior Pa­rade to be­gin at the down­town judg­ing point at South Quay, de­spite a de­ci­sion by the NC­BA that the pa­rade would start at Adam Smith Square this year.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the NC­BA of­fice on Pic­ton Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Lopez was adamant that all the bands parad­ing to­day must start at Adam Smith Square on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, and pro­ceed di­rect­ly to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.Last week, Wood­brook res­i­dents cir­cu­lat­ed a pe­ti­tion op­pos­ing the NC­BA's de­ci­sion to be­gin the route at Adam Smith Square. The res­i­dents ar­gued that chang­ing the start­ing point from Port-of-Spain to Wood­brook would be un­fair to chil­dren trav­el­ling from out­side the city.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns raised about bands com­ing from "deep south" yes­ter­day, Lopez said arrange­ments had been made with the Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) so that chil­dren would be picked up at City Gate and trans­port­ed to Car­los Street.He al­so ad­dressed the wind is­sues along the new pa­rade route raised by ju­nior band­leader Ros­alind Gabriel, say­ing, "Once you on the pa­rade route, at some point in time we go­ing to face the wind, and at some point in time the wind is go­ing to be on their back."

Gabriel go­ing down­town

In re­sponse to yes­ter­day's NC­BA an­nounce­ment, Gabriel said she was not at all afraid, or sur­prised by Lopez's state­ments."He is all about vic­tim­i­sa­tion, scare tac­tics, and be­ing vin­dic­tive," she said by phone."We have an ap­proved po­lice route, which in­cludes Port-of-Spain, and we are stick­ing to it. How can he dis­qual­i­fy peo­ple who are stick­ing to an ap­proved po­lice route?"Gabriel said her band would still start at the down­town judg­ing point to­day.

May­or: NC­BA non­sense

Tim Kee al­so re­spond­ed to the Lopez's state­ments, say­ing it was com­plete­ly non­sen­si­cal."It is not with­in his re­mit to say our route is il­le­gal, he can on­ly be ad­vised by what the po­lice say," Tim Kee said by phone yes­ter­day.He said Lopez al­so had no right to threat­en to dis­qual­i­fy bands for not fol­low­ing the NC­BA route.Tim Kee said it was un­fair that the chil­dren would have to face the wind and sun while walk­ing east along Ari­api­ta Av­enue."It's un­rea­son­able to have chil­dren walk that way," Tim Kee said.

He said the pa­rade was about the chil­dren, and not run­ning from com­pe­ti­tion to com­pe­ti­tion for the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit of band­lead­ers.