Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters has apol­o­gised to Lega­cy band­leader Michael “Big Mike” An­toine for the de­lay his band ex­pe­ri­enced in cross­ing the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage on Car­ni­val Tues­day.

While Lega­cy was cross­ing the stage on Tues­day, An­toine threat­ened to boy­cott next year’s Car­ni­val af­ter not­ing a pres­tige band had skipped in front of his in the line to cross the Sa­van­nah stage.

He lament­ed that he went to NCC per­son­nel, who said they’d pull the bands aside and al­low Lega­cy to pass first, but in­stead still al­lowed the oth­er band to go ahead.

Pe­ters did not an­swer GML calls but in an in­ter­view on i95.5 FM ear­ly yes­ter­day, he ad­mit­ted the NCC erred and asked An­toine to re­con­sid­er.

“We do want to see him get off the mass stage in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That’s where he be­longs. So I apol­o­gise, and yes, some­thing did go wrong. We are go­ing to ad­dress it, and we are go­ing to ad­dress the per­sons who al­lowed it to go.”

How­ev­er, Pe­ters said while he un­der­stood some­thing went wrong, it was not de­lib­er­ate. He ex­plained that a short­er route was sup­posed to be open to all the bands to al­le­vi­ate the grid­lock that nor­mal­ly oc­curs.

“We know it would make it short­er for bands if they go through there. But we want it to be done in an or­der­ly way. That did not hap­pen,” Pe­ters said.

He added, “We sat down in meet­ings up­on meet­ings and dis­cussed that very prob­lem that we be­lieve would have hap­pened. In terms of what was with the route we had there, we try our best to make sure we try to al­le­vi­ate the grid­lock. Some­thing went awry.”

Ad­dress­ing An­toine’s ac­cu­sa­tions that the NCC favoured the “pres­tige bands, Pe­ters said, “I want to apol­o­gise to Big Mike, who is a dear friend of mine and a mas­man in Trinidad and To­ba­go for many, many, many, many years. I would want him to know that I am the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, and with that in mind as well, there will be no dis­crim­i­na­tion against any band what­so­ev­er.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed YU­MA, the mas band al­leged to have caused the is­sue, but of­fi­cials of­fered no com­ment on the mat­ter, say­ing they did not be­lieve they were the band An­toine spoke of.