An­tho­ny Clarence

So Car­ni­val done! It has of­fi­cial­ly come to an end, the procla­ma­tion which her­alds in the reign of the Mer­ry Monarch has seen to that.

The ad­min­is­tra­tors and of­fi­cials have been beat­ing their chests as they re­port that this was one of the most suc­cess­ful car­ni­vals and from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel the word is that it was "the safest Car­ni­val ever."

The ques­tion has to be asked though, are we killing Car­ni­val and sac­ri­fic­ing the mas and spec­ta­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion by the overkill of po­lice method­ol­o­gy and the rigid rul­ings of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) for or­der and struc­ture of the pa­rade of the bands?

The ad­min­is­tra­tion seems to be averse to the Port-of-Spain may­or and the Car­ni­val arrange­ments of the city cor­po­ra­tion. Is it a case of po­lit­i­cal spite con­tin­u­ing, as was the case with the pre­vi­ous may­or Louis Lee Sing?

Chair­man Al­li­son De­mas claims that the NCC will re­vive Down­town Car­ni­val in 2015, but who ran it down in the first place? Who took the chil­dren's mas out of down­town Port-of-Spain and opt­ed for the new Adam Smith Square start­ing point and a new spec­i­fied route for their adult coun­ter­parts?

Let's try to pick some sense out of the non­sense. The de­cree/procla­ma­tion which is read to her­ald in the two-day reign of the Mer­ry Monarch, gives the guide­lines as they per­tain to the du­ra­tion and time pa­ra­me­ters of the cel­e­bra­tion. It al­so serves to re­lax the laws to al­low for free move­ment on the streets in any di­rec­tion (traf­fic lights turned off etc.); gives the cit­i­zens the right to as­sem­ble in ex­ces­sive num­bers, wear cos­tumes, dis­guise and even cov­er their faces among oth­er things.

In the Wood­brook area, po­lice ve­hi­cles were seen bor­ing through the bands at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals with their sirens blar­ing, so mas­quer­aders were forced out of the way, cos­tumes and all. What made it worse was that streams of un­marked and unau­tho­rised cars fol­lowed these po­lice ve­hi­cles as if they had got­ten the all-clear to so do.

This, to my mind, was in poor taste and it in­ter­fered with the peo­ple's par­tic­i­pa­tion, whether mas­quer­ad­er or spec­ta­tor. One had to be con­stant­ly read­just­ing one's po­si­tion in the al­ready lim­it­ed space. Where could the emer­gency be when there were hun­dreds of of­fi­cers al­ready po­si­tioned on the pa­rade route? Why choose to dri­ve through bands on the pa­rade route? Why were the unau­tho­rised ve­hi­cles not or­dered off the route?

Then, at ex­act­ly 9.10 pm on the Tues­day night, a mas­sive squad of po­lice dressed in bur­gundy-coloured jer­seys, swooped down on Ari­api­ta Av­enue and pro­ceed­ed to shut down the mu­sic and or­dered peo­ple to go home; mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors alike. It seems as though Capt Bak­er has re­turned from the days of the Can­boulay Ri­ots for an­oth­er con­fronta­tion; we know all too well how that one end­ed in 1881.

Are the po­lice pro­vok­ing an­oth­er ri­ot, this time in Wood­brook, with their neg­a­tive at­ti­tude? Their in­ter­ac­tion with the pub­lic was less than en­cour­ag­ing. It was in­tim­i­dat­ing, an­tag­o­nis­tic and hos­tile at times, es­pe­cial­ly some po­lice women, who seemed to think that they had a point to prove.

A to­tal lack of un­der­stand­ing was on dis­play as if they were an­noyed that they had to work while we were hav­ing a good time, or tried to. Why this de­lib­er­ate con­fronta­tion­al at­ti­tude? Re­mem­ber the procla­ma­tion iden­ti­fies mid­night on Tues­day as the end of Car­ni­val.

There was an un­can­ny lev­el of ig­no­rance dis­played in this year's Car­ni­val. From ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ci­sions to the­ex­pec­ta­tions of some of our cit­i­zens, the want­i­ng was the same. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it is the same catch­ment of hu­man re­source per­son­nel that ser­vices all as­pects of in­sti­tu­tion­al em­ploy­ment needs, thus the even­tu­al re­sults are a re­flec­tion of the present state of the so­ci­ety. Clear re­flec­tions of im­pa­tience, in­dis­ci­pline, lack of knowl­edge and thus lack of un­der­stand­ing of most things were dis­played. The en­light­ened now cringe in dis­be­lief.

So most of the chil­dren's bands went against the grain of the pre­scribed route and start­ed from the tra­di­tion­al down­town start­ing point, go­ing up Fred­er­ick Street to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, in­stead of the new Adam Smith Square start­ing point. They were prob­a­bly pe­nalised, (the chil­dren had fun though). Those who took the new route were vis­i­bly burnt out and ex­haust­ed by the time they reached the top of Cipri­ani Boule­vard.

How­ev­er, the city was starved of the usu­al en­thu­si­asm be­cause the breach by the protest­ing bands was quite un­ex­pect­ed and ven­dors would have been ill-pre­pared; the usu­al strate­gi­cal­ly placed mu­sic would have been non-ex­is­tent and spec­ta­tors would not have lined that route but may have gone straight to the Sa­van­nah if at all.

But how did the route re­stric­tions af­fect the large bands on Mon­day and Tues­day, some of whom were pe­nalised for not ap­pear­ing at a pre­scribed judg­ing point first? Such a rule would have all the bands fol­low each oth­er like a line of ants, not de­vi­at­ing from the route and thus sub­ject to any stop­page in the flow. This would even­tu­al­ly es­ca­late in­to the same full-scale jam they tried to avoid.

Did Tribe, Bliss and Yu­ma's ab­sence from the reg­u­lar route make a dif­fer­ence? Did it ren­der any ease to the oth­er bands' pa­rade-jam woes? What was the pur­pose of the GPS de­vices used by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel? Was it just to track bands?

Imag­ine the Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism stat­ing that the NCC will em­ploy the ser­vices of traf­fic end trans­port en­gi­neers, to study the route and pro­vide so­lu­tions. What ut­ter non­sense.

The so­lu­tions have been tried and test­ed years ago and are there to be em­ployed/de­ployed. Ev­i­dent­ly the huge um­brel­la of ig­no­rance un­der which all these ad­min­is­tra­tors op­er­ate and a seem­ing un­will­ing­ness to make sense, pro­pel them down a treach­er­ous path.

The "procla­ma­tion" at the start of the Car­ni­val pro­vides for the free move­ment of bands on any street, there­fore, if a route is blocked or con­gest­ed then an­oth­er route should be avail­able for se­lec­tion. This, how­ev­er, should be man­aged, as was the case when the am­a­teur ra­dio club RE­ACT con­trolled the pa­rade of the bands in the late 90s and ear­ly 2000s. They con­stant­ly kept the bands mov­ing along free pas­sages, rout­ing and re-rout­ing as their per­son­nel who moved at the front of each band, re­port­ed back to a com­mand cen­tre. Those were the best years of pa­rade route man­age­ment; the flow of the mas bands was free.

Since they could bring back Capt Bak­er, why not bring back things that worked and made sense?

An­tho­ny Clarence is a cul­tur­al ac­tivist and po­et.