The most fre­quent­ly asked ques­tion by se­cu­ri­ty, pa­trons and ven­dors at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage on Car­ni­val Mon­day was, “Where are the mas bands?”

Un­der the cov­er of dark­ness, com­peti­tors in this year’s J’Ou­vert King and Queen com­pe­ti­tion con­verged on South Quay, Port-of-Spain, haul­ing tow­er­ing cos­tumes and elab­o­rate props for one of Car­ni­val’s most bit­ing show­cas­es of so­cial com­men­tary. By the time the first bands be­gan to move, mas­quer­aders had al­ready trained their satire on lo­cal politi­cians, ris­ing tax­es, traf­fic penal­ties, and even world lead­ers, us­ing tra­di­tion­al mas to lam­poon the head­lines dom­i­nat­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion.

San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val may have been short of $200,000 this year, but mas­quer­aders, young and old, slim and volup­tuous, be­came liv­ing brush­es, splash­ing the city’s grey can­vas with ri­otous paint, mud and pow­der. In the south­ern dawn, J’Ou­vert blos­somed, wild and un­bro­ken, across the as­phalt in what San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris be­lieves was the “biggest J’Ou­vert in the coun­try”.

Band­lead­ers praised the Ch­agua­nas Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee for its de­ci­sion to erect a stage for this year’s cel­e­bra­tions.

Scores of spec­ta­tors and rev­ellers came out in their num­bers as J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions kicked off in San­gre Grande yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Three house fires, which oc­curred in a week, in­clud­ing one which led to the death of a home­own­er, have reignit­ed calls for a fire sta­tion in the Princes Town/Moru­ga dis­trict. The lat­est blaze left An­tho­ny Ja­cob, his wife, and 12-year-old son count­ing their loss­es af­ter the up­per floor of their Fifth Com­pa­ny Vil­lage home was de­stroyed while they were at church on Car­ni­val Sun­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ued her long­stand­ing tra­di­tion of spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment by mak­ing nine stops at Hin­du tem­ples across her con­stituen­cy on the sa­cred night of Sun­day in­to Mon­day in ob­ser­vance of Ma­ha Shiv­ara­tri 2026.

De­spite the cre­ativ­i­ty in South Mas, mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors ex­pressed con­cern that not enough is be­ing done to pro­tect and pro­mote San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says the Gov­ern­ment may again ap­proach the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors for sup­port for the long-de­bat­ed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion—and he is of­fer­ing his own con­stituen­cy as one of the first ar­eas to be des­ig­nat­ed.

“Be aware of your sur­round­ings. Don’t overindulge in al­co­hol. Don’t leave your drinks un­at­tend­ed.”

Mo­torists will be al­lowed to ac­cess the east­bound lane of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route for a few hours on Car­ni­val Mon­day, the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion (MT­CA) has con­firmed.

TTT Lim­it­ed has apol­o­gised for the au­dio in­ter­rup­tion that oc­curred dur­ing Helon Fran­cis’ per­for­mance of Doh For­get on Sun­day night at Di­manche Gras say­ing at no time did TTT pur­pose­ful­ly cut the au­dio.