Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah says the planned So­cadrome at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Port-of-Spain is seg­re­gat­ing Car­ni­val along racial, class and colour lines. Al­though he stopped short of call­ing for a boy­cott of the venue or scrap­ping of the plan, he said he wants na­tion­al dis­cus­sion on the is­sues of seg­re­ga­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in T&T.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at MSJ head­quar­ters, St Joseph Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said the So­cadrome re­flect­ed the re­al­i­ty of a T&T so­ci­ety which is "high­ly seg­re­gat­ed and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by race, by colour, by re­li­gion, by class, by where peo­ple live ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly."

"Un­less T&T ad­dress­es all of these is­sues and stops sweep­ing them un­der the car­pet, we will con­tin­ue to have a so­ci­ety that is more and more po­larised be­cause we have many dif­fer­ent T&Ts. West­moor­ings is not the same as Sea lots and Bar­rack­pore or Mara­bel­la Train­line," he said.Ab­du­lah said the So­cadrome would be sim­i­lar to the Sam­badrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and would pro­mote biki­nis, beads, flesh and fete­ing rather than the­atre.

"We are los­ing the soul of the Car­ni­val. We are los­ing the soul of the coun­try and we have to stop that some­how and to do that we need di­a­logue in­clu­sive of pan," he said.He said the MSJ want­ed to re-awak­en the con­scious­ness of the peo­ple.Last week the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) agreed to al­low four large Car­ni­val bands–Bliss, Harts, Tribe and Yu­ma–to pa­rade through Wood­brook to the So­cadrome in­stead of the usu­al Car­ni­val route and cross­ing the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage.

Ab­du­lah said the So­cadrome was tak­ing T&T back to colo­nial days when Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions were sep­a­rat­ed by class, race and colour. He said here had al­ways been two Car­ni­vals–Mar­di Gras (pret­ty mas) which was cel­e­brat­ed by the planter class and Cam­boulay, which was cel­e­brat­ed by slaves. When Cam­boulay was banned, he said, there was a merg­ing of the two cel­e­bra­tions on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

"What we have is the com­plete con­trol of the Car­ni­val by the Mar­di Gras and peo­ple's fes­ti­val has been rel­e­gat­ed to the side­lines and made some­what of a mock­ery of in all kinds of form and fash­ion," he said.