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Friday, July 25, 2025

Gypsy must withdraw

by

533 days ago
20240208

The de­ci­sion by Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters to par­tic­i­pate in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch and Na­tion­al Ex­tem­po com­pe­ti­tions has be­come a ma­jor talk­ing point in a short Car­ni­val sea­son.

Pe­ters qual­i­fied for both fi­nals and, from all in­di­ca­tions, is pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate in both of them, with the Ex­tem­po fi­nal tak­ing place last night.

As a ca­lyp­son­ian, there is no doubt that Pe­ters de­serves a place in any ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion, as he was crowned Ca­lyp­so Monarch in 1997 with Lit­tle Black Boy and Rhythm of a Peo­ple.

Twen­ty-sev­en years af­ter his vic­to­ry in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, his Lit­tle Black Boy holds its own as one of the most pow­er­ful, pre­scient and per­cep­tive so­cial com­men­tary ca­lyp­soes com­ing out of T&T’s Car­ni­val.

His 1986 hit Sink­ing Ship is al­so con­sid­ered to a clas­sic of po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary, per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing in Feb­ru­ary of that year the zeit­geist of the coun­try that re­sult­ed in the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment be­ing swept from of­fice in De­cem­ber 1986 by a 33-3 seat mar­gin.

While there is no dis­put­ing Pe­ters’ ca­lyp­so prowess, if he steps on stage in ei­ther of the two na­tion­al fi­nals, he does so as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), the statu­to­ry body es­tab­lished by an Act of Par­lia­ment in 1991.

As NCC chair­man, Gyp­sy and its board of com­mis­sion­ers are ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for the mil­lions of dol­lars the Gov­ern­ment dis­burs­es through the com­mis­sion to the Car­ni­val bod­ies such as PanTrin­ba­go, the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­spon­si­ble for the op­er­a­tion of the Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, and the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), which is re­spon­si­ble for ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions.

Part of mon­ey the NCC dis­burs­es to run the an­nu­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion goes to judges in both the Panora­ma and Ca­lyp­so Monarch and Na­tion­al Ex­tem­po com­pe­ti­tions.

If Gyp­sy de­cides to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tion fi­nals, as he is en­ti­tled to by virtue of his per­for­mances up to now, he places him­self in the in­vid­i­ous po­si­tion of po­ten­tial­ly col­lect­ing a cheque that he, as NCC chair­man, may have signed.

His par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fi­nals of the two com­pe­ti­tions al­so places the judges in the awk­ward po­si­tion of hav­ing to de­cide on com­peti­tors who would in­clude the chair­man of the body that over­sees all Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties.

Among the ob­jec­tives the NCC Act tasks the com­mis­sion with is “to make Car­ni­val a vi­able na­tion­al, cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial en­ter­prise,” and to pro­vide “the nec­es­sary man­age­r­i­al and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture for the ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion and mar­ket­ing of the cul­tur­al prod­ucts of Car­ni­val.”

At sec­tion 11, the NCC Act re­quires com­mis­sion­ers “whose in­ter­est is like­ly to be af­fect­ed, whether di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, by a de­ci­sion of the board on a sub­ject mat­ter,” to dis­close the na­ture of the in­ter­est by writ­ing to the sec­re­tary not lat­er than four days af­ter the sub­ject mat­ter has come to his knowl­edge.

Whether this sec­tion of the NCC Act di­rect­ly im­pacts on Gyp­sy’s ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the two com­pe­ti­tions, it is clear it would be a con­flict of in­ter­est for him to par­tic­i­pate. He, how­ev­er, has made it clear he will con­tin­ue to do so.

The ap­pro­pri­ate rem­e­dy, there­fore, would be for Mr Pe­ters to recog­nise the con­flict of in­ter­est and grace­ful­ly with­draw from fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Giv­en the long tem­po­ral reach of Car­ni­val and the statu­to­ry re­quire­ment to make it a “com­mer­cial en­ter­prise,” the ca­lyp­son­ian should fo­cus all of his time and en­er­gy in man­ag­ing the 2024 Car­ni­val and mak­ing it the most suc­cess­ful it­er­a­tion pos­si­ble.


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