Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters says he is dis­ap­point­ed with the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the 2023 To­ba­go Car­ni­val, not­ing that key as­pects of the main events were miss­ing.

While he ap­plaud­ed the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant no­tice­able im­prove­ments from last year’s in­au­gur­al event, Pe­ters be­lieves that To­ba­go has the po­ten­tial to have a world-class Car­ni­val. How­ev­er, he said, this could be on­ly be achieved through clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the THA and NCC.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Pa­rade of the Bands yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Pe­ters said what the To­ba­go Car­ni­val needs is a blue­print for suc­cess.

“I think the or­gan­i­sa­tion last year was bet­ter than this year to be hon­est. There were a lot of short­com­ings be­cause Car­ni­val is not some­thing that starts on Car­ni­val. This to To­ba­go is Car­ni­val Tues­day be­cause yes­ter­day was the J’Ou­vert,” Pe­ters said.

“You can’t wait for peo­ple to start; you have to put ac­tiv­i­ties in place. Your com­pe­ti­tions, what­ev­er you’re hav­ing, it must start a cer­tain time so the bands would be there, so the peo­ple would know and come to what­ev­er you’re hav­ing there. But if it is that you’re just go­ing to leave it up to what­ev­er it is, with no in­cen­tives to bring the peo­ple and bands here, every­thing we do in Car­ni­val has in­cen­tives.”

Yes­ter­day, al­though there was some en­ter­tain­ment from tra­di­tion­al mas and large King and Queen cos­tumes, in the first two hours of the pa­rade it took close to an hour be­fore bands could pass the stage at the Stage in the Sea point. Dur­ing that lull, spec­ta­tors and ven­dors looked on at the emp­ty route aim­less­ly and im­pa­tient.

De­spite this, the pa­rade went on as rev­ellers from Fog An­gels and Jade Mon­key Mas, Icon­ic Mas and oth­er bands cov­ered the streets mo­ments lat­er.

Still, Pe­ters, who was al­so caught pac­ing up and down the streets wait­ing for the pa­rade yes­ter­day, said he felt To­ba­go could have hit the tar­get to achiev­ing an out­stand­ing dis­play with the help of NCC.

“J’Ou­vert was top of the line, the par­ties and pre­lude was much more or­gan­ised than this (Pa­rade of the Bands) is at this minute,” he said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that he was dis­ap­point­ed that the NCC was com­plete­ly ex­clud­ed from To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions for both its in­au­gur­al year and this year, con­sid­er­ing that coun­tries around the world re­spect­ed and sought Trinidad’s in­put for their own Car­ni­vals.

“To­ba­go Car­ni­val has the po­ten­tial to do bet­ter than all the Car­ni­vals in the Caribbean. To­ba­go has every­thing it needs to have a per­fect Car­ni­val. In this case, I will –we, be­cause To­ba­go is part of Trinidad and To­ba­go—and we are go­ing to have to make To­ba­go Car­ni­val work…There is a blue­print that we could put here that can work but it has to be drawn up.”

De­spite the THA re­ject­ing the NCC’s help in 2022, he said he was will­ing to put this be­hind and of­fer the nec­es­sary as­sis­tance to make To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val a renowned event.

“I’m not feel­ing any­thing. I’m just look­ing on but still we have to help be­cause re­gard­less of what, this is Trinidad and To­ba­go. We can­not al­low one part of my coun­try to look bad with some­thing that we of­fer the world and is renowned for, which is Car­ni­val. We are a Car­ni­val coun­try, so we need to make it bet­ter, we need to work out what­ev­er. I am sure next year will be bet­ter.”

Ear­li­er this year, Gyp­sy had not­ed there were promis­ing talks about a po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion with the THA for To­ba­go Car­ni­val. How­ev­er, the plans dis­cussed did not ma­te­ri­alise and the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Car­ni­val went on with­out the NCC’s as­sis­tance.

Not­ing this yes­ter­day, he said, “We are the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, our in­put to To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val is very minute re­al­ly and I think that is one of the prob­lems be­cause the ex­per­tise for Car­ni­val re­al­ly re­sides in Trinidad be­cause that is it.”

Nonethe­less, Gyp­sy re­vealed that he was al­ready in talks with Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion Tashia Bur­ris to plan next year’s event, start­ing as year­ly as next month.

Ad­dress­ing the event’s suc­cess, Bur­ris said she was sat­is­fied with the feed­back and out­come of the Car­ni­val, say­ing To­ba­go was reap­ing the ben­e­fits of the THA’s hard work.

“All we have been get­ting is great re­views, so we will again look at the Car­ni­val holis­ti­cal­ly, see where we can con­tin­ue to im­prove, but I think To­ba­go Car­ni­val has proven it­self and it is a prod­uct that is here to stay,” Bur­ris said, promis­ing a big­ger bet­ter fes­ti­val in 2024.

As hun­dreds of mas­quer­aders marched through the streets of Scar­bor­ough to the sounds of so­ca, bring­ing the cur­tains down on this year’s four-day cel­e­bra­tions, Bur­ris said the THA will as­sess the prof­its soon.

She pre­dict­ed the Car­ni­val will come in un­der the $12 mil­lion bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

“We were able to achieve a num­ber of the goals we had for our­selves in terms of in­creased lo­cal par­tic­i­pa­tions for res­i­dents, and a high qual­i­ty of stan­dard of the event that we ex­e­cut­ed. I think we were able to end with a cli­max.”

Mean­while, in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion, Dex­ter Sandy, said he wel­comed the of­fer by Pe­ters to work to­wards sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty and struc­ture and en­hanc­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of the To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

He said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was will­ing to sit at the ta­ble in talks with any­one who is will­ing to bring new ideas for the Car­ni­val and had no prob­lem with the NCC get­ting in­volved. He said he hoped the THA will take up the of­fer to im­prove the To­ba­go Car­ni­val prod­uct.