De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge is dou­bling down on not al­low­ing Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Vy­bz Kar­tel (Adid­ja Palmer) di­rect ac­cess to the na­tion’s im­pres­sion­able youths. How­ev­er, he has agreed to grant him two me­dia in­ter­views.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Tem­ple Court, Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, Sturge said the per­mit for Kar­tel will be signed soon af­ter last-minute ad­just­ments are made to it.

The draft or­der, which will be fi­nalised be­fore Kar­tel’s ar­rival, will now al­low two ra­dio in­ter­views dur­ing non-peak hours be­tween 9 am to noon and 1 pm and 3 pm. Sturge said this is to en­sure chil­dren are in school and away from the ra­dios. How­ev­er, an ear­ly morn­ing tele­vi­sion in­ter­view was de­nied and Sturge re­mains adamant that a meet and greet, a vis­it to a school or youth cen­tre, and a cul­tur­al lunch with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers will not be al­lowed.

Sturge said the aim is not to pun­ish the artiste but to en­sure that his mes­sag­ing is in align­ment with “pos­i­tiv­i­ty.” While there were some changes to the first draft, he said the min­istry “dug its heels in” and de­nied the youth meet­ing and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers meet­ing.

“I have no doubt that his mes­sage might very well be pos­i­tive and well-in­tend­ed. But in the mean­time, we can’t give the per­cep­tion of le­git­imis­ing him, hav­ing re­gard to re­cent his­to­ry. But as I in­di­cat­ed ear­li­er, with the pas­sage of time I’m sure we can make an ob­jec­tive as­sess­ment and come up with the con­clu­sion that there is no need for a per­mit in the fu­ture.”

Sturge said he could not stop Kar­tel’s fans from flock­ing to him, and it was not the in­tent to “mi­cro­man­age” his time in the coun­try, but said he need­ed to be stern on the stance of what was ac­cept­ed by the min­istry.

Vy­bz Kar­tel was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to per­form in T&T in Feb­ru­ary but the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val was post­poned to May 31 due to clash­es with Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties.

But in one of his first acts of busi­ness af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed min­is­ter fol­low­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion vic­to­ry, Sturge sought to pro­hib­it Kar­tel from two me­dia in­ter­views and oth­er events. Kar­tel was ini­tial­ly sched­uled to ar­rive in the coun­try on May 26 but will now ar­rive a day lat­er.

Asked if he will be at­tend­ing the con­cert, Sturge laughed and said, “No. I’m too old for that sort of thing, but I was a, and still re­main a fan of Boun­ty Killer, Su­per Cat and Cut­ty Ranks and Shab­ba Ranks.”

In a so­cial me­dia post last Fri­day, Kar­tel ad­dressed the mat­ter, say­ing he agreed with Sturge and had no is­sues with the re­stric­tions.

“The prob­lem lies in where the pro­mot­er took it up­on him­self and to try to fill Vy­bz Kar­tel itin­er­ary with things that had noth­ing to do with Vy­bz Kar­tel per­for­mance. And right­ful­ly so, the De­fence Min­is­ter pull the plug on that part of the itin­er­ary. And there is no prob­lem there be­cause Vy­bz Kar­tel rep­re­sent for Trinidad, rep­re­sent for Ja­maica, as a mat­ter of fact, rep­re­sent for the en­tire Caribbean,” he said in the video.

Palmer was freed of the mur­der of Clive “Lizard” Williams by the Privy Coun­cil in 2024 on the grounds of ju­ror mis­con­duct. Ja­maica’s Court of Ap­peal ruled against retry­ing him and his co-ac­cused af­ter the case was re­mit­ted back to it for de­ter­mi­na­tion. Kar­tel, along with Shawn “Shawn Storm” Camp­bell, Kahi­ra Jones and An­dre St John, were con­vict­ed of the Sep­tem­ber 2011 mur­der of Williams.