All things con­sid­ered, the cel­e­bra­tion of Car­ni­val 2024 leaves a great deal for which T&T should be thank­ful.

In the last few weeks, there was some grum­bling among union rep­re­sen­ta­tives of po­lice of­fi­cers that some law en­forcers were plan­ning to with­hold their labour dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od to protest the late pay­ment of back­pay and is­sues sur­round­ing pro­mo­tion in the ser­vice.

With T&T av­er­ag­ing more than one mur­der a day for the first six weeks of 2024, the pub­lic would have been as­sured by the voice record­ing of Gold Com­man­der for this year's fes­tiv­i­ties, ACP Kelvern Thomp­son, on Mon­day: "The po­lice of­fi­cers are out in their num­bers in all ten po­lice di­vi­sions. All se­cu­ri­ty points and all key se­cu­ri­ty points are manned at this time."

The fact that no ma­jor crimes dis­rupt­ed the J'Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions or the Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day Pa­rade of the Bands is tes­ta­ment to the ma­tu­ri­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers in re­port­ing for work "in their num­bers," as well as the over­ar­ch­ing op­er­a­tional or­gan­i­sa­tion of the law en­force­ment re­sources over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od. This would have in­clud­ed plain-clothed and uni­formed of­fi­cers, as well as hu­man and tech­no­log­i­cal in­tel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance.

The ex­tent to which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's vis­it to Wash­ing­ton DC, dur­ing which he held talks with se­nior of­fi­cials of the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA), played a role in the rel­a­tive calm of the Car­ni­val will prob­a­bly nev­er be ful­ly re­vealed.

All the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies de­serve ku­dos for the se­cu­ri­ty of Car­ni­val, which man­aged not to be heavy-hand­ed enough to dis­rupt the joy of the jump-up.

Car­ni­val 2024 was al­so no­table in that all of the ma­jor com­pe­ti­tions — Sat­ur­day's Na­tion­al Panora­ma, Sun­day's Di­manche Gras, fea­tur­ing the Ca­lyp­so Monarch and the Kings and Queens of Car­ni­val, and the Pa­rade of the Bands on Mon­day and Tues­day — went off smooth­ly, were all of high qual­i­ty and the re­sults were undis­put­ed.

The open­ing of the Di­manche Gras show, with its chore­og­ra­phy, use of Min­sha­lesque pup­pets and its trib­ute to Denyse Plum­mer was par­tic­u­lar­ly ef­fec­tive. But the or­gan­is­ers of the show need to lim­it the guest artistes and en­sure it keeps mov­ing and on a tight sched­ule, since it again ran well past mid­night.

The re­turn of T&T's pre­mier en­ter­tain­er Machel Mon­tano to the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, cer­tain­ly added lus­tre to the Di­manche Gras show, but it al­so ex­posed the fact that the demise of the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion has left a hole on Car­ni­val Fri­day that re­quires fill­ing by a pri­vate-sec­tor en­ti­ty with mon­ey, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al abil­i­ty and cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

T&T can­not be the birth­place of so­ca, and claim to be its main pro­po­nent, if the pre­mier so­ca com­pe­ti­tion is ab­sent or held in some oth­er coun­try.

In its post-mortem of the 2024 Car­ni­val, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) needs to pay close at­ten­tion to com­ments made by Ron­nie McIn­tosh, a top ca­lyp­son­ian and band­leader, that "we are mak­ing our Car­ni­val the most ex­pen­sive one to at­tend so we need to be care­ful about that.”

The NCC's re­sponse must be to en­sure that it nips in the bud this ex­is­ten­tial threat to T&T Car­ni­val's for­eign ex­change-earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty by sit­ting down with band­lead­ers, air­lines and ho­tels and com­ing up with so­lu­tions in the na­tion­al in­ter­est.