Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris claims an at­tempt was made to “un­der­mine and kill To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val.”

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day morn­ing, he said the poor­ly planned and at­tend­ed re­cent Car­ni­val in To­ba­go was part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to en­cour­age To­bag­o­ni­ans to fo­cus more on the is­land’s Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val rather than the na­tion­al fes­tiv­i­ties.

There were more spec­ta­tors and mas­quer­aders on Tues­day and the op­po­site on Mon­day with most bands not ex­ceed­ing 20 rev­ellers.

Mor­ris said he is con­cerned about the qual­i­ty of the fes­tiv­i­ties and fur­ther claimed there was an aban­don­ment of key Car­ni­val events in east­ern To­ba­go.

“It is a clear de­lib­er­ate ac­tion to force peo­ple, by wa­ter­ing it down, for you to come to the nat­ur­al con­clu­sion that per­haps the is­land should not have it. They want to kill the Car­ni­val be­cause they are not about uni­ty. They are not about na­tion­al­i­ty,” he said.

In 2023, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said Feb­ru­ary Car­ni­val for To­ba­go would mean some­thing dif­fer­ent and Oc­to­ber will even­tu­al­ly be­come the main stake in Car­ni­val busi­ness.

How­ev­er, Mor­ris said the THA’s fail­ure to ef­fec­tive­ly pro­mote Car­ni­val was a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal busi­ness­es and artistes.

“I want to apol­o­gise to all of the far east—the peo­ple from east­ern To­ba­go, Rox­bor­ough, De­laford, Good­wood, Char­lot­teville, Spey­side, and North­side—for the way this ad­min­is­tra­tion has aban­doned you. Aban­doned you when it comes to fes­ti­vals,” Mor­ris said.

He list­ed sev­er­al events that have been dis­con­tin­ued or scaled back in the re­gion.

“They have mashed up the Jazz, which has tak­en away Spey­side Jazz from the peo­ple of To­ba­go East. The Feb­ru­ary na­tion­al Car­ni­val—they have now dis­band­ed night mas in Rox­bor­ough. Noth­ing again for the peo­ple of To­ba­go East,” he lament­ed.

Mor­ris al­so ac­cused Tourism Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris of be­ing ab­sent dur­ing Car­ni­val events.

On Car­ni­val Mon­day, Bur­ris, in a so­cial me­dia post, shared a pho­to with the cap­tion: “Es­ki­mo sea­son is in full ef­fect. To all the cit­i­zens of To­ba­go and Trinidad en­joy­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties please take a jump and a chip for me. For all those camp­ing on our beau­ti­ful is­land, please cher­ish our sur­round­ings and take noth­ing but good mem­o­ries ... and for those like my­self who are out in the cold work­ing day and night to sell the great­est lit­tle is­land on the plan­et to the world, the Car­ni­val ta­ban­ca will be over soon.”

She was at­tend­ing the ITB Berlin Con­ven­tion from March 4-6 in Ger­many. Mor­ris said this was un­ac­cept­able.

“If any Sec­re­tary would ab­di­cate their du­ty like that, that Sec­re­tary does not de­serve their po­si­tion,” he said.

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke said he was dis­ap­point­ed at the Car­ni­val ex­e­cu­tion and the ab­sence of key events in his Rox­bor­ough dis­trict. He too ac­cused the THA of killing Feb­ru­ary Car­ni­val in To­ba­go.