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Monday, July 7, 2025

Tobago Carnival autonomy controversy

by

Prof Hamid Ghany
610 days ago
20231105
 Prof Hamid Ghany

Prof Hamid Ghany

The af­ter­math of the re­cent To­ba­go Car­ni­val has re­vealed a sim­mer­ing con­tro­ver­sy over the au­ton­o­my of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to host the event. The Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters, stat­ed in a re­cent in­ter­view that the NCC is the body re­spon­si­ble for Car­ni­val for the “whole coun­try”. Need­less to say, this po­si­tion pro­voked a re­sponse from the THA over the ques­tion of ju­ris­dic­tion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the event.

Amidst all the rev­el­ry, it can­not be lost on the pop­u­la­tion that what is go­ing on here is a re­sponse to the of­fer of au­ton­o­my to To­ba­go and a counter-re­sponse from the cur­rent NCC that they ought to have greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the event by virtue of their “na­tion­al” sta­tus.

While the two To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills sit idly in the Par­lia­ment at Com­mit­tee Stage in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter be­ing stalled from the time of the last THA elec­tions in De­cem­ber 2021, the au­ton­o­my ge­nie is out of the bot­tle and is mas­querad­ing with­out the fear of pow­der from Port-of-Spain.

The THA has been host­ing cel­e­bra­to­ry events for decades, the most no­table be­ing the an­nu­al To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val which was start­ed in 1986 and has been de­signed to pre­serve and high­light the cul­tur­al tra­di­tions of To­ba­go. There has nev­er been any Trinidad in­put in man­ag­ing this an­nu­al event that is usu­al­ly held in Ju­ly.

The choice of date for the hold­ing of the To­ba­go Car­ni­val (the last week­end in Oc­to­ber) sep­a­rates it from the an­nu­al T&T Car­ni­val in ei­ther Feb­ru­ary or March de­pend­ing on when Ash Wednes­day falls.

The im­por­tant fac­tor to ob­serve here is that the Feb­ru­ary/March Car­ni­val is not in­dige­nous to To­ba­go. It was brought to Trinidad by the French planter class who came to the is­land from Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe as a con­se­quence of the Cedu­la of 1783, while their slaves and de­scen­dants sub­se­quent­ly de­vel­oped the Can­boulay. The Trinidad Car­ni­val was brought to To­ba­go as a con­se­quence of the union of the two British colonies in 1899. There has been a nat­ur­al and or­gan­ic de­vel­op­ment of Car­ni­val in Trinidad alone for more than one hun­dred years be­fore any adap­ta­tion of the fes­ti­val would take place in To­ba­go.

Re­tired UWI his­to­ri­an Dr Ri­ta Pem­ber­ton ad­vis­es that there was a dif­fi­cult in­duc­tion of Car­ni­val in­to To­ba­go so­ci­ety with the es­tab­lished church­es on the is­land frown­ing on the prac­tices of stick fight­ing, ca­lyp­so and tam­boo bam­boo which were con­demned as “evil prac­tices”.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val is an event that is de­signed to be unique to To­ba­go and of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty for To­ba­go to show­case it­self as dis­tinc­tive. The is­land’s his­to­ry and cul­ture are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from Trinidad.

The NCC needs to put it­self in a sec­ondary role and try to as­sist the growth and de­vel­op­ment of a prod­uct that will not be­long to them and will not be con­trolled by them. This is what hap­pens when po­lit­i­cal games are played with con­cepts like “au­ton­o­my” and peo­ple are led to be­lieve that they will get the au­ton­o­my that is be­ing of­fered, and then it gets stalled for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons.

To­bag­o­ni­ans have moved on psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly from the mind­set of be­ing dom­i­nat­ed by PoS, and they are ready to re­ceive a gen­uine of­fer of au­ton­o­my from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment re­gard­less of who is in pow­er in Scar­bor­ough and PoS.

How­ev­er, the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate in PoS will be re­luc­tant to hand over au­ton­o­my to a po­lit­i­cal par­ty oth­er than the PNM in To­ba­go. All that will cause is a fur­ther rise of To­ba­go na­tion­al­ism to re­sist any and all forms of dom­i­na­tion and con­trol from PoS.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val is more than just a fes­ti­val, it is an iden­ti­ty is­sue for which the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and its agents are un­wel­come in­trud­ers if they try to take con­trol and as­sert that they are the re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ty for the whole coun­try.

In Sched­ule 1 of the pro­posed To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill that deals with the List of Mat­ters for which the To­ba­go Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil shall have Ex­clu­sive Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ju­ris­dic­tion in To­ba­go, the fol­low­ing is very clear­ly stat­ed: “5. Cul­ture and the Arts.”

From all re­ports, the Car­ni­val in To­ba­go this year was a re­sound­ing suc­cess with the To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce giv­ing it a thumbs-up for be­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful from a busi­ness stand­point. For how much longer will To­ba­go au­ton­o­my be de­layed?

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.

columnist


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