Port-of-Spain May­or Ray­mond Tim Kee has is­suedan apol­o­gy­to all women and the en­tire coun­try, fol­low­ing state­ments that seemed to link the death of a Japan­ese mas­quer­ad­er to a cul­ture of lewd­ness­but in­sists that his com­ments were tak­en out of con­text.

The apol­o­gy came in the form of a state­ment from the May­or's of­fice:

"His Wor­ship the May­or of Port of Spain Al­der­man Ray­mond Tim Kee un­equiv­o­cal­ly apol­o­gizes to women and the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion who were of­fend­ed by re­marks at­trib­uted to him fol­low­ing the death of car­ni­val vis­i­tor and mas play­er, Asa­mi Na­gakiya.

May­or Tim Kee says that his com­ments were com­plete­ly mis­con­strued, and one par­tic­u­lar head­line un­for­tu­nate­ly stat­ed "POS May­or crit­i­cis­es women" draw­ing fire even be­fore the ar­ti­cle was read. May­or Tim Kee said that he ad­vised women to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pro­tect them­selves as so many women are the vic­tims of abuse at the hands of oth­ers.

He agrees that his com­ments could have been con­sid­ered out of line, but de­spite the anger be­ing ex­pressed from many quar­ters in­clud­ing fem­i­nist groups and ac­tivists, he has al­so re­ceived calls of sup­port from sev­er­al women agree­ing with him on the lack of mod­esty dis­played by some women and girls on the streets dur­ing the Car­ni­val Cel­e­bra­tions.

There is in­deed a con­cern about the be­hav­iour of both male and fe­male mas play­ers gen­er­al­ly as they are now be­ing em­u­lat­ed by chil­dren who be­lieve that lewd be­hav­iour and car­ni­val go hand in hand.

He says that it is with deep re­gret to have to speak of the death of Ms Na­gakiya who has been a wel­come vis­i­tor and close friend of the steel band com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad & To­ba­go for sev­er­al years.

May­or Tim Kee fur­ther states that Mem­bers of Coun­cil and Man­age­ment of the Port of Spain Cor­po­ra­tion al­so ex­tend deep­est sym­pa­thy to the fam­i­ly of Asa­mi Na­gakiya.

The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and the pub­lic would be kept up­dat­ed by the au­thor­i­ties."