Judge rules: NCC the right body to run Carnival 2003

ALL SYSTEMS are go and the National Carnival Commission (NCC) will be running the show.

This was the elated declaration yesterday from NCC chairman Kenny De Silva outside the Hall of Justice, minutes after a High Court judge discharged an injunction ordering the NCC to pay $1 million to the National Carnival Bandleaders Association (NCBA). De Silva also revealed that the NCC will extend “an olive branch” to the various Carnival stakeholders through the reconstitution of the Joint Management Committee (JMC).

When the matter continued before Justice David Myers in the Port-of-Spain Fourth Civil Court yesterday, NCBA attorney Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj SC maintained that the NCC had abused its power by refusing to pay these monies to his client.  Maharaj claimed that the decision to refuse payment to the NCBA was actually taken in July 2002 and was merely “rubber-stam-ped” at the January 31, 2003 meeting of the NCC.  He argued that even if the NCC had the power to change or recommend policy changes, they had a duty to inform the NCBA, give them a chance to raise objections and allow ample time for those objections to be heard.

Myers inquired what constituted an abuse of power and Maharaj replied that if the NCC took actions to frustrate Cabinet policy, this qualified as an abuse. In his arguments before the court on Tuesday, Maharaj said the former United National Congress (UNC) Gov-ernment took a decision in 1997 to provide monies for certain agencies, including the NCBA, to undertake activities which pertained to the promotion of Carnival. Maharaj claimed this denial of funds by the NCC was the only disruption in the otherwise smooth running of Carnival since 1998. However in his argument, NCC attorney Martin Daly SC declared that the 1997 decision by the Basdeo Panday Cabinet did not give the NCBA the right to expect automatic payment from the NCC.  Referring to the Cabinet minute at which the decision was made, Daly said the then Attorney-General had said that the decision was arrived at following a review of the NCC Act of 1991. However he noted that “Cabinet can’t bypass an Act of Parliament,” and unless there was a proper review of the relevant legislation, the NCBA could have been running Carnival illegally since 1998. He further contended that the NCBA had “not told the full story” to the court about the reasons why the NCC decided not to pay them the $1 million.