Pe­ter Ray Blood

At­ten­dance was high on Sat­ur­day morn­ing when the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) host­ed its Car­ni­val Stake­hold­ers Con­sul­ta­tion–"Crys­tallis­ing the Role of the NCC"–at the UTT Au­di­to­ri­um, Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), Port-of-Spain.Chaired by NCC deputy chair­man Don Sylvester, the con­sul­ta­tion was at­tend­ed by ma­jor stake­hold­ers in T&T Car­ni­val, in­clud­ing heads of spe­cial in­ter­est groups, band­lead­ers, mas­quer­aders, ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and steel­band per­son­nel.

Be­gin­ning prompt­ly at its ad­ver­tised 10 am start, fol­low­ing wel­come re­marks by NCC chair­man Al­li­son De­mas, short ad­dress­es were giv­en by Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz and Min­is­ter of the Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas.De­mas re­vealed that the last strate­gic plan for Car­ni­val was done 16 years ago, with the last con­sul­ta­tion be­ing held in 2007.

Point­ing out that T&T Car­ni­val has evolved over cen­turies, Cadiz said the in­tent of his min­istry was not to cre­ate a car­ni­val that looked "for­eign used."Hint­ing that there need­ed to be a more hands-on man­age­ment of the an­nu­al fes­ti­val by the Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies, and that the Gov­ern­ment spent "hun­dreds of mil­lions" on Car­ni­val, he ques­tioned how one in­sti­tu­tion could dic­tate on the charg­ing of stream­ing of Car­ni­val in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

In his ad­dress, Dou­glas said re­search was the first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the de­vel­op­ment of Car­ni­val, adding that the Gov­ern­ment was charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing Car­ni­val a vi­able rev­enue-earn­ing prod­uct.The day's pro­gramme was di­vid­ed in­to six ses­sions, in­clud­ing The Man­age­ment of Car­ni­val; In­vest­ment: Pub­lic and Pri­vate; As­sess­ing the Cur­rent State of Car­ni­val; Lo­gis­tics and In­fra­struc­ture; Mar­ket­ing and Pro­mo­tion; and, Prod­uct De­vel­op­ment.

Each ses­sion was co-or­di­nat­ed by mod­er­a­tors and sec­tion lead­ers, in­clud­ing Guyanese man­age­ment con­sul­tant Dr Aubrey Arm­strong, NCC CEO Clarence Moe, econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li and Mar­tin Franklin.Fol­low­ing short pre­am­bles by fa­cil­i­ta­tors of ses­sions, the floor was opened for in­puts from the au­di­ence.

Moe in­vit­ed com­men­tary on the role of the NCC, with ref­er­ence be­ing made to the NCC Act of 1991 and the sub­se­quent Cab­i­net minute of 1997.Au­thor/cul­tur­al ac­tivist Rubadiri Vic­tor said the NCC must over­see the phe­nom­e­non of T&T Car­ni­val in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, warn­ing that T&T was los­ing Car­ni­val glob­al­ly.

Em­pha­sis­ing that "Car­ni­val 2013 was the worst ever" he'd wit­nessed, Lega­cy band­leader "Big Mike" An­toine ac­cused the NCC of run­ning away from its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, re­mind­ing that the NCC was man­dat­ed through leg­is­la­tion to man­age T&T Car­ni­val.He sug­gest­ed that the NCC seek the as­sis­tance of Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion chair­man William Munro to run Car­ni­val, to re­dound to the sim­i­lar suc­cess Munro has had in pro­duc­ing the an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch event.

There was loud and sus­tained ap­plause when for­mer di­rec­tor of cul­ture Lester Efebo Wilkin­son sug­gest­ed that the NCC ought to re­vis­it the 1991 Act to fix the or­gan­i­sa­tion.He al­so clar­i­fied that a Cab­i­net note could not su­percede an Act of Par­lia­ment.Wilkin­son urged Dou­glas to take the ini­tia­tive to unite the three frag­ment­ed spe­cial in­ter­est groups of mas.

He said the onus was on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the role of the NCC. Al­so ap­plaud­ed for his in­put was Me­dia 21 di­rec­tor Pe­ter Scoon, who sug­gest­ed that the de­mands of the job could kill CEO Moe, who he said should be re­tired.Scoon added that there was no suc­ces­sion plan­ning in the NCC, with Moe hav­ing no un­der­study or de­part­ment to car­ry on his work.

Among the stake­hold­ers seen at Sat­ur­day's con­sul­ta­tion were Janelle Pen­ny Com­mis­siong Chow, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az; Tu­co chair­man Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Bro Re­sis­tance); King of Car­ni­val Ger­ald Weekes; band­leader Ros­alind Gabriel; NCDF chair­man Mahin­dra Satram-Maraj; for­mer na­tion­al ca­lyp­so mon­archs Kurt Allen and Du­ane O'Con­nor; at­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly; and Munro.