Dance­hall su­per­star Vy­bz Kar­tel has pub­licly voiced his sup­port for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­strict as­pects of his itin­er­ary dur­ing his up­com­ing vis­it to the coun­try, em­pha­sis­ing that the move was jus­ti­fied and in no way af­fects his sched­uled per­for­mance.

Kar­tel is card­ed to be the fea­ture act in the May 31, One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val.

How­ev­er, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge in­ter­vened and put a stop to sev­er­al sched­uled pub­lic ap­pear­ances.

In a video state­ment ad­dress­ing re­cent me­dia re­ports sur­round­ing his Trinidad en­gage­ment, Kar­tel clar­i­fied that he holds no is­sue with the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ven­tion, which came af­ter a pro­mot­er al­leged­ly in­clud­ed unau­tho­rised ac­tiv­i­ties in his trav­el plans.

“The prob­lem lies in where the pro­mot­er took it up­on him­self and tried to fill Vy­bz Kar­tel’s itin­er­ary with things that had noth­ing to do with [my] per­for­mance,” the artist ex­plained. “And right­ful­ly so, the de­fence min­is­ter pulled the plug on that part of the itin­er­ary.”

Kar­tel stressed that all nec­es­sary per­for­mance per­mits have been grant­ed and re­as­sured fans that the show will go on as planned. “There is no prob­lem with Vy­bz Kar­tel per­form­ing in Trinidad,” he stat­ed. “My job is to come per­form for the peo­ple of Trinidad.”

Hav­ing not per­formed on the is­land in over 15 years, Kar­tel ex­pressed deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for his Caribbean au­di­ence. “Vy­bz Kar­tel rep­re­sents for Trinidad, rep­re­sents for Ja­maica — I rep­re­sent for the en­tire Caribbean,” he said.

He al­so ex­tend­ed re­spect to both the out­go­ing and new­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ments. “Big up to the out­go­ing gov­ern­ment and con­grat­u­la­tions to the new gov­ern­ment,” Kar­tel said.