Ke­jan Haynes

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he takes strong ob­jec­tions to a view that Trinidad should take the lead in To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val.

He said To­ba­go is more than ca­pa­ble based on oth­er cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tions it hosts dur­ing the year.

Ear­li­er this week, NCC chair­man Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters said he felt “dis­heart­ened” and “in the dark” about plans for To­ba­go Car­ni­val af­ter the THA had failed to re­sume talks on the event with the na­tion­al body.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, how­ev­er, Au­gus­tine re­spond­ed di­rect­ly to an in­ter­view he saw Pe­ters give on TV.

“I saw where Mr Pe­ters was al­most say­ing ‘look, we know about Car­ni­val leh we come and do the car­ni­val for you’. And I take strong ob­jec­tions to that sort of phi­los­o­phy in the To­ba­go space,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said To­ba­go has been host­ing fes­ti­vals much longer than many oth­er ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion. He said the THA al­so has more fes­ti­vals than Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in any sin­gle cal­en­dar year.

“If af­ter hav­ing a fes­ti­val com­mit­tee, Car­ni­val com­mit­tee, we have TPAC Com­mit­tee (To­ba­go Per­form­ing Arts Com­pa­ny) and all of these cre­atives in the space, if the cre­atives in this space can­not host and man­age a To­ba­go Car­ni­val, they will need to shut down all of these es­tab­lish­ments. Shut all of them down and start from scratch. In fact, send every­body home, and let Trinidad come and do the work,” he added.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2022 will of­fi­cial­ly be launched at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al com­plex on Au­gust 17.

“And that will come along with some sur­pris­es, some won­der­ful sur­pris­es. You will see some things be­ing clev­er­ly, clev­er­ly done that will al­low for the me­dia to un­der­stand and have an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of where we are go­ing with Car­ni­val,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said when his team re­turns from Grena­da’s Spice­mas, they will be man­dat­ed to pro­duce a for­mal re­port on what tran­spired.