An­na-Lisa Paul

Even though Car­ni­val 2023 has been dubbed the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals, yes­ter­day’s open­ing of the two-day rev­el­ry failed to at­tract the usu­al crowd of spec­ta­tors that of­ten line the streets, anx­ious­ly await­ing the of­fi­cial 4 am start of J’Ou­vert.

The Lord Kitch­en­er Stand at the down­town judg­ing point, Broad­way, Port-of-Spain, re­mained vir­tu­al­ly emp­ty by 8 am, whilst those gath­ered along the pave­ment were less than in past years.

As thou­sands gath­ered at var­i­ous mas camps and meet­ing points in and around the cap­i­tal ea­ger­ly await­ing the des­ig­nat­ed time to head un­to the streets,  Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez read the procla­ma­tion aloud for the first time in two years. How­ev­er, it was to a much small­er crowd than in pre­vi­ous years.

Be­fore the start of the rev­el­ry at 4 am, there was a heavy po­lice pres­ence which saw the num­ber of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers out­num­ber­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Asked what he felt could have led to the poor turnout, Mar­tinez joked, “I hope peo­ple haven’t for­got­ten.”

Revellers enjoy themselves with Zess Nation during J'Ouvert on Ariapita Avenue.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

How­ev­er, he added that it could prob­a­bly be that peo­ple had been ready­ing them­selves to play mas which could have ac­count­ed for low­er spec­ta­tor num­bers.

Car­ni­val had to be can­celled in 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, so its re­turn this year was an­tic­i­pat­ed to at­tract some 20,000-plus vis­i­tors.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell com­mend­ed Trinida­di­ans for be­ing re­silient as he de­clared, “This is it, we are here. It is time to ex­hale af­ter two years of un­cer­tain­ty and re­stric­tion.”

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 bands were reg­is­tered for J’Ou­vert this year, while a to­tal of 68 mas bands were reg­is­tered over­all.

He said that his min­istry was cur­rent­ly en­gaged in a study to as­cer­tain just how suc­cess­ful the en­tire Car­ni­val sea­son has been–and this will in­clude the pletho­ra of all-in­clu­sive par­ties and fetes that were on the cal­en­dar lead­ing up to Mon­day and Tues­day.

Mitchell dis­agreed with claims by pro­mot­ers that the events were not as well at­tend­ed as they ought to have been.

He said, “I don’t know that to be ac­tu­al­ly true. I think there have been a con­sid­er­able num­ber of fetes over and above what we usu­al­ly see es­pe­cial­ly in this short pe­ri­od, so we are do­ing some as­sess­ments now.”

Mitchell said he was hap­py with the build-up lead­ing to the two days of rev­el­ry which he be­lieved was quite suc­cess­ful and ex­cit­ing.

Both Mar­tinez and Mitchell were pleased that sev­er­al cruise lin­ers had docked in T&T wa­ters boost­ing vis­i­tor ar­rivals dur­ing the past sev­er­al days.

bp Renegades revellers pass in front of the empty stands durng the Downtown Carnival Committee's J’Ouvert celebrations, South Quay, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Red Ants revellers enjoy themselves during J'Ouvert celebrations.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA