The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I have always believed being original is far better than copying or a knock-off so I have no alternative but to be not so positive over this Carnival Junkanoo as I fear money talks and where money is the future lies so the tradition of the real Junkanoo, if it still exists, is heading to the city dump quickly.

Pumping $8m into the Carnival when the traditional groups are desperately trying to muster the alleged ‘000’s of dollars needed for Boxing Day and New Year’s paradise is tantamount in simple words dangerous, precipitous to castration of the traditional parades.

Turning converting Junkanoo to a Las Vegas costume-styled parade might be sexy and sensual and provocative especially when imaged in advertising, but is it junkanoo?

Last year’s parades, it was well known that if the numbers boys who were fighting to get their way of turning miraculously illegal into legal if they did not write big cheques nothing was happening. The parades might not have happened. Numbers are now legal.

Was there a Marketing Survey carried out before the Minister of Finance committed $8m to this Carnival? Can the Minister please make it public? Has there been, in the light of the incidents in the US in Ferguson and now NY a study made to see if the majority of who the Bahamas attracts will actually be interested to visit let alone do what the concept of the Carnival is to rush in the street and inter-react with we? Will anyone buy a costume?

You can count easily how many visitors over Boxing Day and New Years attends the parades and our hotels are usually full, that is 15,000 people!

Is this Carnival a “political event”? Yet another concept to distract us.

ABRAHAM MOSS

Nassau,

December 4, 2014.