Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke says Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters had a valid point when he said the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed To­ba­go Car­ni­val was miss­ing key as­pects and that col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the NCC and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is vi­tal for en­hanc­ing the Car­ni­val’s prod­uct.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the PDP head­quar­ters in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day, Duke said the THA must show how To­ba­go has ben­e­fit­ted from the $12 mil­lion bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for this year’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

He said he be­lieves the THA must al­so re­think the way it hosts Car­ni­val.

To­ba­go's 2023 Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion, which ran from Oc­to­ber 27-29, was com­mend­ed for some of its im­prove­ments but crit­i­cised for some as­pects by Pe­ters, who was on the is­land for the fes­tiv­i­ties.

In par­tic­u­lar, Pe­ters said he be­lieved if the Car­ni­val want­ed to be­come big­ger and bet­ter, it need­ed to de­vise a blue­print in a greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NCC to take it to that lev­el.

Duke agreed with this sen­ti­ment yes­ter­day, say­ing, “If we are go­ing to have plen­ty small Car­ni­val then so be it, but (for) the big Car­ni­val we have to ap­peal to Trinidad and that’s where Gyp­sy comes in. Like him, or hate him, or love him, or leave him, with­out Trinidad, the Tues­day mas is a buss.

"I looked at it and I thought we were beg­ging peo­ple to pa­rade on the streets or what? I think Trinidad should be 100 per cent in­volved. It should not be half-half. They are the mec­ca of Car­ni­val. It’s a tragedy to think we can do it alone. We are a fool to do that. The wise man will col­lab­o­rate with strength and ex­cel­lence.”

He warned the THA about be­com­ing proud over what he de­scribed as “noth­ing to boast about,” es­pe­cial­ly when there is no da­ta to sug­gest To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val can be­come a world-class at­trac­tion, when on its own it had failed to at­tract the Trinidad mar­ket.

“If we are do­ing some­thing, let’s try to har­monise the Car­ni­val around the peo­ple and learn from the best and bright­est and have re­al art­form, re­al pa­rade of bands and get peo­ple in­volved. If Car­ni­val doesn’t at­tract re­al tourists, it’s a waste of time. Let’s have a blocko and call it a day.”

Duke pro­posed a her­itage vil­lage in place of a street Car­ni­val, where the THA will use be­tween 20-40 acres of land to es­tab­lish a Car­ni­val city for year-round en­ter­tain­ment ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as to host oth­er events such as the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence and To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val.

He de­scribed such a fa­cil­i­ty as be­ing an "opera house" but said he would not liken it to the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex fa­cil­i­ty.

He said this plan will con­tain ac­tiv­i­ty where the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the pub­lic, re­li­gious and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty will not be dis­turbed.

Mean­while, MP for To­ba­go West Sham­fa Cud­joe praised To­ba­go for a suc­cess­ful event.

In a Face­book post in an ap­par­ent re­sponse to Pe­ters' crit­i­cism of the event pub­lished in Mon­day's T&T Guardian, she said: “To whom it may con­cern, a fan­tas­tic time was had by all. This is our sec­ond year of bring­ing the ac­tion to par­adise, and be­cause we are a re­source­ful and re­silient peo­ple, we’ll con­tin­ue to get bet­ter and bet­ter every time. So, doh hot up yuh head, save yuh lil (sic) en­er­gy, and keep it pos­i­tive. We got this!”