Car­ni­val 2024 takes place on Feb­ru­ary 12 and 13, which is more than enough time for those in Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) lead­er­ship po­si­tions and the three Car­ni­val in­ter­est groups to be­gin prepa­ra­tions and de­vel­op a sol­id plan to avoid the mis­steps that dogged this year’s fes­tiv­i­ties.

With just days to go be­fore the ‘Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals’, it is hard to ig­nore the can­cel­la­tions, fund­ing short­falls and poor­ly pa­tro­n­ised events that have cast a shad­ow over what should have been a joy­ous re­turn to the an­nu­al rev­el­ry af­ter two-year hia­tus.

De­spite ef­forts by Cul­ture Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell and NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters to put a pos­i­tive spin on Car­ni­val 2023, they should be keen­ly aware of the ur­gent need to re­turn to the draw­ing board to re­think and re­cal­i­brate sev­er­al as­pects of T&T’s biggest cul­tur­al event.

Mr Pe­ters, a for­mer Ca­lyp­so Monarch and Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) found­ing mem­ber, had a first-hand look at how bad­ly many events or­gan­ised by that in­ter­est group have been far­ing for quite a few years. He cer­tain­ly can­not de­ny the ev­i­dence right in front of him on Thurs­day night when he com­pet­ed in the Ex­tem­po cat­e­go­ry of TU­CO’s Kaiso­ra­ma. The num­ber of emp­ty seats in the Grand and North Stands meant lit­tle in the way of gate re­ceipts, a sit­u­a­tion TU­CO should not be fac­ing with one of its pre­mier shows.

Al­though last week­end’s Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta drew much larg­er crowds at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, even there, the turnout was nowhere near the num­bers the se­mi-fi­nal of the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion usu­al­ly at­tracts.

Add to that the dwin­dling pa­tron­age at ca­lyp­so tents, sev­er­al of which are op­er­at­ed by TU­CO, and it looks like the or­gan­i­sa­tion is fac­ing an­oth­er loss-mak­ing year.

And that isn’t the worst of it.

Be­cause of the late re­lease of funds to var­i­ous Car­ni­val bod­ies, sev­er­al events had to be ei­ther scaled down or can­celled.

It is un­ac­cept­able that mere days be­fore Car­ni­val, there were com­plaints from re­gion­al as­so­ci­a­tions that they had not re­ceived NCC fund­ing. Par­tic­u­lar­ly alarm­ing was the dis­clo­sure that it was on­ly this past week that the NCC sub­mit­ted a re­quest for $83.8 mil­lion from the Fi­nance Min­istry.

As a re­sult, re­gion­al bod­ies were se­vere­ly ham­pered in ad­vanc­ing their plans for shows and com­pe­ti­tion. The Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion opt­ed to go ahead with its plans even with­out fund­ing but the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion can­celled its events and all this has put a se­ri­ous damper on ac­tiv­i­ties that should be light­ing up var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

These are fail­ures that could have been avoid­ed with prop­er ad­vance plan­ning, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the part of the NCC. Every can­cel­la­tion was a lost op­por­tu­ni­ty to gen­er­ate rev­enue and earn a de­cent re­turn on the mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars in­vest­ed in Car­ni­val.

Last-minute scrap­ping of events from the fes­ti­val cal­en­dar does not look good, es­pe­cial­ly in the year that T&T should be mak­ing a glo­ri­ous re­turn to host­ing “the great­est show on earth.”

A post-mortem on Car­ni­val 2023 can’t come too soon. In fact, stake­hold­ers should get to­geth­er right af­ter Ash Wednes­day to start de­vel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan to avoid a re­peat of these many Car­ni­val mis­takes next year.