Kevon Felmine

As Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions con­tin­ued in­to Tues­day night, with rev­ellers try­ing to en­joy the last hours of cel­e­bra­tions on the streets, thou­sands left the city de­ject­ed­ly as the mu­sic was brought to sud­den end at 10 pm.Some pan lovers, who gath­ered at Cof­fee Street for Tues­day night's steel­band com­pe­ti­tion, al­so left an­gri­ly af­ter po­lice re­port­ed­ly stopped Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra dur­ing their per­for­mance, al­though the cel­e­bra­tions were sched­uled to end at mid­night.

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sr Supt Ce­cil San­tana dis­pelled those claims, say­ing that the pan com­pe­ti­tion was al­lowed to con­tin­ue un­til all bands had played.Ex­plain­ing, how­ev­er, why the DJs, food ven­dors and bars were shut down ear­ly, he said all those peo­ple op­er­at­ed un­der spe­cial events li­cens­es which ex­pired at 10 pm.San­tana said the pan com­pe­ti­tion was not brought to an abrupt end, as all the bands were al­lowed to play. The bars, he said, were not func­tion­ing be­cause their li­cens­es had ex­pired.

"When 10 pm reached, we stopped all the peo­ple with spe­cial events li­cens­es. We al­lowed the pan to play un­til the com­pe­ti­tion was fin­ished," he said.This was sup­port­ed by deputy may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, al­so the leader of Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra."The com­pe­ti­tion was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed around 11 pm and be­cause we are the host band at Cof­fee Street we de­cid­ed to play last," Re­grel­lo said.

"Some bands came in late so we start­ed to play af­ter 11 pm. The po­lice were not aware that we were at a com­pe­ti­tion point and they thought we were just play­ing in the streets."They came down and sound­ed their sirens and when we stopped, they in­formed the judges that they would al­low us to play." Both San­tana and Re­grel­lo said there were no ma­jor in­stances of vi­o­lence at Tues­day night's cel­e­bra­tions, ex­cept for pa­trons throw­ing bot­tles in­to the air.

Nine­teen reg­is­tered bands crossed three judg­ing points at High Street, Cof­fee Street and the South Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts be­fore 8 pm, de­spite a late start to the pa­rade of the bands com­pe­ti­tion.The cus­tom­ary Tues­day night street par­ty at Sut­ton Street failed to come off this year as bar­ri­cades were placed around the streets, block­ing the mu­sic trucks and ac­com­pa­ny­ing mas­quer­aders from en­ter­ing the area.

Al­so on Tues­day, one of the glass walls at Re­pub­lic Bank's Low­er High Street branch shat­tered due to heavy vi­bra­tion caused by a pass­ing mu­sic truck. How­ev­er, of­fi­cers were quick­ly on the scene to pre­vent any­one from en­ter­ing the build­ing.San Fer­nan­do may­or Kaz­im Ho­sein said yes­ter­day's re­sult for the com­pe­ti­tions were be­ing tab­u­lat­ed and might be an­nounced at a press con­fer­ence to­day.