As I watched for the fourth straight year – 2023, 2024, 2025 and now 2026 – con­tests in Car­ni­val judged by peo­ple, I re­call al­ways why I love sports more than arts be­cause un­less the ref­er­ee or um­pire has a stinker or two, nor­mal­ly those on the sport­ing field find a way to con­jure up a re­sult that at least sug­gests fair play and a gen­er­al re­ward for en­deav­our, with more of­ten than not ab­solute and un­wa­ver­ing skill com­ing to the fore­front in most re­sults. The fol­low­ing quotes are im­por­tant for life lessons at Car­ni­val time, I be­lieve.

“Com­pe­ti­tions are de­cid­ed by peo­ple, and peo­ple bring their pref­er­ences with them.”

— Si­mon Cow­ell

“Judg­ing tal­ent is nev­er neu­tral. It re­flects the judge as much as the per­former.”

— Howard Gard­ner

“In any con­test judged by hu­mans, fair­ness is fil­tered through opin­ion.”

— Stephen Jay Gould

Every­one knows that the one sport that has led to the most de­spi­ca­ble re­sults in terms of hon­esty and ac­count­abil­i­ty is box­ing. Sad­ly, it is al­most as if box­ing at­tracts the wrong per­sons who make the de­ci­sions, and sev­er­al box­ers are giv­en ques­tion­able de­ci­sions. So, when I hear per­sons men­tion box­ing re­sults in the same breath as our Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions, I am dis­turbed.

“The en­tire sport is set up to al­low these blind spots for cor­rup­tion. Every­thing about box­ing is de­signed to en­sure the crème de la cor­rup­tion ris­es to the top." — G Mor­gan

So, as I ob­serve the week ahead, in Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions terms, I check my­self to com­pare some of these events and the pos­si­ble judg­ing for­mats to sport­ing events and whether they would ever make the grade, and if so, what grad­ing they would re­ceive.

If we start with the Road March com­pe­ti­tion, it is based on ac­tu­al re­sults ap­par­ent­ly, al­though the ve­rac­i­ty of the re­port­ing on how many times a par­tic­u­lar song is played or where it is played on the stage, on the side of the stage, or which sec­tion of the band plays the sound, and if there are 20 sec­tions, one vote for each sec­tion, can leave more ques­tions than an­swers, and I doubt any pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete and his coach­ing team would ever agree to what ap­pears to be a hap­haz­ard at best judg­ing sys­tem in this cur­rent for­mat.

Let us now dis­cuss the con­tro­ver­sial top­ic of the King and Queen of Car­ni­val and the buildup to the fi­nal night at Di­manche Gras on Car­ni­val Sun­day. I have to open­ly ad­mit some self-in­ter­est, as one of my fam­i­ly mem­bers is in­volved, so I fol­low out of both in­ter­est and cu­rios­i­ty, along with my cere­bral think­ing and saga­cious pro­cess­ing. I can re­port that this year, like re­cent years, has been dis­ap­point­ing in terms of new ideas and think­ing. At one stage, while I looked out in­to the vast Queens Park Sa­van­nah back­stage area, all the cos­tumes looked alike – just dif­fer­ent ver­sions of big floats on large or ex­tra-large wheels, some be­ing rolled or pushed to­wards the start­ing line by per­sons not par­tic­i­pat­ing so as to wise­ly re­serve the con­tes­tant’s en­er­gy for a 3-minute slot on stage.

I am cer­tain that Wayne Berke­ley and oth­ers of that artis­tic mind must be rolling in their graves at these “Floats”. Year in, year out, it is all a vari­a­tion of the same themes and dif­fer­ent colours, and the cre­ativ­i­ty has dis­ap­peared, but I can­not blame the par­tic­i­pants, as this is clear­ly what the judges want. There is no imag­i­na­tion; the cre­ative juice has dried up in over 90 per­cent of the “out­fits”.

I was told that the judges may not be able to in­ter­pret any­thing bet­ter, per­haps giv­en their lim­i­ta­tions, and I would hope that this is mere­ly “old talk”; oth­er­wise, the cur­rent Pres­i­dent of the Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion, Mark Ayen, who is no stranger to this en­vi­ron­ment, needs to ex­am­ine his team and the lega­cy they are leav­ing.

Does any­one in this com­pe­ti­tion be­lieve that any of these win­ners would ever re­ceive calls from in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Olympics to come be part of the oc­ca­sion, as Pe­ter Min­shall has achieved? The an­swer is un­equiv­o­cal­ly No and yes, Min­shall is an ex­cep­tion­al artist and de­sign­er, but I just sense that the cur­rent vac­u­ous na­ture of judg­ing will rub young tal­ent with ideas and in­no­va­tion away, far away.

How­ev­er, I will leave the rest for those who care about this in­dus­try to sort out be­fore it is too late, as can be wit­nessed by the grad­u­al­ly re­duc­ing crowd at­ten­dances every year.

In­stead, I want to fo­cus on a dis­turb­ing trend I have no­ticed with­in re­cent years in terms of score­cards. Let me say first, there is NO SPORT where it is stat­ed that a par­tic­i­pant is not al­lowed to re­view and walk away with his score­sheet so he and his team can im­prove by find­ing out where they went wrong and what needs to be cor­rect­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly where you have paid an en­trance fee as well. In all ar­eas of com­pe­ti­tion there can be on­ly one win­ner, but there are al­so sev­er­al per­sons who seek to get bet­ter and im­prove, so the score­sheet is crit­i­cal.

If, as I have been told, in the 2026 ver­sion of the King and Queens Pre­lim­i­nary con­tests, on­ly the top 20 scores were pro­vid­ed to the me­dia, and those who placed from 21 to 47 or 48 had no idea of their marks and were not be­ing al­lowed to get a score­sheet but could come and watch their marks but not record or pho­to­graph them, then that is not on­ly un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and against nat­ur­al rights and fair­ness but al­so sug­gests a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. If that is so, then I hope the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) would seek clar­i­ty and ad­dress these mat­ters, as I be­lieve it is the NCC that funds these var­i­ous hy­brid bod­ies in the Car­ni­val dis­po­si­tion. I hope that Mark Ayen would ad­dress this in the full dis­clo­sure it needs to be; oth­er­wise, his lega­cy and his reign may be tar­nished by these claims.

As for the Ca­lyp­so fi­nals al­so on Car­ni­val Sun­day, I hope that again, while we nev­er all agree on the win­ner, all the rel­e­vant judg­ing score­cards are open and made avail­able. I would al­so sug­gest there is a time for new judg­ing per­son­nel; just as foot­ball ref­er­ees, no mat­ter how good they are, have to re­tire by a cer­tain age, gen­er­al­ly around 45, there should be some cri­te­ria and bench­marks, as we are in an evolv­ing world.

So again, as I have stat­ed, if all of these car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions were sport­ing events, there are a lot of things that have to be cor­rect­ed to meet in­ter­na­tion­al play­ing con­di­tions stan­dards.

Last but not least, I must ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion with Panora­ma and the Pan Fi­nals. As a mere cu­ri­ous ob­serv­er, it ap­pears when it comes to this par­tic­u­lar com­pe­ti­tion that the judges nev­er change from pre­lim­i­nar­ies to semi­fi­nals to fi­nals, as the steel­band that leads from the first stage nor­mal­ly wins, which sug­gests many cir­cum­stances.

1) Judges are too lazy to change.

2) There is no im­prove­ment from round to round by the var­i­ous bands.

3) No ro­ta­tion of judges

The prob­lem for me, just as with the King and Queen of Car­ni­val and this com­pe­ti­tion, is that there is too much left to in­ter­pre­ta­tion and pref­er­ence. Where­as with the ca­lyp­so con­test, we can all wit­ness and de­tect poor melody, missed lines and just poor over­all per­for­mance and pre­sen­ta­tion.

All of this must cause se­ri­ous con­cern for the NCC, which, un­der the as­tute and pro­gres­sive Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, has set about to en­sure a lot more per­sons are fa­cil­i­tat­ed this Car­ni­val with free and qual­i­ty artistes at their dis­pos­al. But just as SportTT has to over­look er­rant sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, I be­lieve sim­i­lar­ly the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment will need to re­vise some of these or­gan­i­sa­tions that get fund­ing where there are ques­tions over process­es and ul­ti­mate­ly the fund­ing and judg­ing. It is not go­ing to be easy, but cer­tain change is need­ed un­less we all de­sire the art form that is car­ni­val to be erod­ed.

So I hope that the for­ward think­ing of the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment un­der Min­is­ter Michele Ben­jamin and her team is al­lowed to flour­ish and grow, as we need mod­ern thoughts which I hope will ma­te­ri­alise in sports soon.