Both Min­is­ter of Cul­ture Ran­dall Mitchell and Pan Trin­ba­go are har­mo­nious in their po­si­tion that they see no con­flict of in­ter­est in en­er­gy com­pa­ny bpTT’s dual role in this year’s Na­tion­al Panora­ma fi­nal, as both a ti­tle spon­sor for the event and a spon­sor for the bp Rene­gades band.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Mitchell said he saw ab­solute­ly no is­sues with bp’s role in Panora­ma. Mitchell added that it’s a mu­tu­al part­ner­ship that ben­e­fits more than just the Rene­gades.

“The spon­sor re­ceives its ben­e­fits by way of its mar­ket­ing or Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) ob­jec­tives, as well as the tax in­cen­tives to be de­rived for spon­sor­ing our cul­ture. And the spon­sored ben­e­fits from the re­ceipt of monies that will be utilised in all of the com­pe­ti­tion ben­e­fit­ing ALL the com­peti­tors,” Mitchell said via text mes­sage.

Mitchell fur­ther ex­plained that cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go has a re­newed in­ter­est in Panora­ma and that should be seen as a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment.

“Many cor­po­rate spon­sors aban­doned the op­por­tu­ni­ties to spon­sor Panora­ma, as they didn’t want their cor­po­rate iden­ti­ties mixed up in the bac­cha­nal un­der the pre­vi­ous PanTrin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tives. They are all now com­ing back on board now be­cause of this ex­ec­u­tive un­der (Bev­er­ly) Ram­sey-Moore, which has been ac­count­able and fo­cused on good gov­er­nance,” he said.

Mean­while, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore said she too saw no is­sues with bp’s dual in­volve­ment.

“It is not a con­flict of in­ter­est. Not at all. It is not the first time bp is a ti­tle spon­sor to Panora­ma, that has been hap­pen­ing over the years. And we have sent out pack­ages to a num­ber of cor­po­rate bod­ies through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go with sev­er­al scopes, such as ti­tle spon­sor­ship, gold, pre­mi­um, bronze and for us, for­tu­nate­ly, bp came on as a ti­tle spon­sor. It’s noth­ing new,” Ram­sey-Moore said.

Ram­sey-Moore said the ti­tle spon­sor­ship pack­age is the high­est tiered pack­age with re­spect to spon­sor­ship but chose not to dis­close ex­act­ly how much mon­ey bp had in­vest­ed in the icon­ic com­pe­ti­tion.

And like Mitchell, Ram­sey-Moore said bp’s mon­ey con­tributes to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion and her or­gan­i­sa­tion. She ex­plained that out­side of Car­ni­val, PanTrin­ba­go does not re­ceive fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the state.

“Af­ter Car­ni­val, no­body thinks that PanTrin­ba­go has to man­age its af­fairs on its own. We do not re­ceive a sub­ven­tion from Gov­ern­ment out­side of Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, so for six months a year we have to pad­dle our own ca­noe, and no­body looks in, but you are look­ing in now be­cause you want con­fu­sion and bac­cha­nal,” Ram­sey-Moore ar­gued.

She added, “So when spon­sors come in, it brings in ad­di­tion­al rev­enue to the or­gan­i­sa­tion to man­age its af­fairs and to in­vest in all 300 steel­bands for the rest of the year. Who gives them any­thing else af­ter car­ni­val?”

The PanTrin­ba­go boss said she would not be dis­tract­ed “by the noise” and in­stead wants to fo­cus on her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s abil­i­ty to at­tract spon­sors once again to Panora­ma.

Seek­ing to fur­ther un­der­score the fair­ness of the com­pe­ti­tion, Ram­sey-Moore said spon­sors are kept far from the judg­ing process.

She ex­plained, “We have six judges judg­ing a pre­lim­i­nary round and a fi­nal. At the end of the judg­ing one of those judges be­comes the al­ter­nate and those scores are thrown out. No one knows who is the al­ter­nate un­til the judg­ing is fin­ished.

“Al­so, the high­est and low­est are thrown out. If there was any bias, on any part of any judge, three scores are thrown out, the al­ter­nate, the high­est mark and the low­est. So bands are judged out of 300. The judges them­selves do not even know who first, sec­ond, third or fourth.”