CHARLES KONG SOO

It wasn't on the scale of ma­gi­cian David Cop­per­field' tricks when he made the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty in New York City dis­ap­pear, how­ev­er the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) pulled off the feat of mak­ing the Cipri­ani Stat­ue in Port-of-Spain dis­ap­pear by en­cas­ing it in a Christ­mas dec­o­rat­ed house.

While his­to­ri­an Mark Mc Peanne agreed with vis­i­tors in down­town Port-of-Spain that the con­struc­tion of the dec­o­ra­tive house at the Cipri­ani round­about helped add a fes­tive at­mos­phere to the Christ­mas sea­son, by con­ceal­ing his stat­ue, it was in­sen­si­tive and dis­re­spect­ful to the mem­o­ry of trade union­ist and World War 1 vet­er­an Cap­tain Arthur Cipri­ani.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day at the Cipri­ani round­about site Mc Peanne said "While I'm in agree­ment of any Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tion of this mag­ni­tude, to be in a cen­tral lo­ca­tion at the same time; it's in the wrong place.

"Some peo­ple might say it's just a tem­po­rary struc­ture, why fuss about hav­ing a beau­ti­ful dec­o­ra­tion in the heart of the city, in the most cen­tral lo­ca­tion.

"But can you imag­ine where the Cipri­ani stat­ue is, if there was an eter­nal flame there and be­cause of Christ­mas they de­cide to turn off the flame, put a board over it erect a huge Christ­mas tree around Memo­r­i­al Park, then one would un­der­stand the in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty of hav­ing this struc­ture over the Cipri­ani stat­ue.

"I'm not in favour of where the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tion has been placed hid­ing the in­hib­it­ed view of the stat­ue which should al­ways be vis­i­ble.

"I trav­el and lived in Eu­rope and have not seen any na­tion­al mon­u­ment or land­mark be it Nel­son Man­dela in Lon­don or Win­ston Churchill cov­ered over be­cause of a spe­cial event or com­mem­o­ra­tion."

He said there would be an up­roar if they at­tempt­ed to do the same thing to a struc­ture such as the Amer­i­can na­tion­al mon­u­ment the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty.

When May­or Joel Mar­tinez was con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about the con­tro­ver­sy about con­ceal­ing the Cipri­ani stat­ue and how it was de­faced twice last year, he replied on those oc­ca­sions he moved swift­ly to have them cleaned.

Re­gard­ing the dec­o­ra­tive house around the stat­ue, he said he thought it looked "re­al­ly nice" and he didn't think much of the fact that it was a dis­re­spect to the labour leader and lo­cal gov­ern­ment may­or.

Mar­tinez said if deemed of­fen­sive, he will speak with the var­i­ous bod­ies, lis­ten to all the com­plaints gen­er­at­ed and speak to Ude­cott and see if it could make any changes.