KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has congratulated winners in this year’s Carnival, which ended on Tuesday.
“I want to congratulate clearly, the performers, the participants in the realm of the creative imagination,” he told a press conference Wednesday.
“Blondie Bird and Friends has done quite well for this season,” he said of the mas band whose presentation “A glimpse of Kingstown” won it a third consecutive Band of the Year title, ahead of 13 other contenders.
Blondie Bird also won the Junior Band of the Year, King and Queen of the Bands, and Junior King and Queen of the Bands titles, in addition to Sections of the Bands in both the junior and senior categories.
Gonsalves also congratulated Gamal “Skinny Fabulous” Doyle on winning the Soca Monarch competition on Saturday — his fourth win — and Lornette “Fya Empress” Nedd, who won the Ragga Soca, Calypso Monarch and Road March competitions, in addition to being second in Soca Monarch.
“I am very pleased to see that ‘Brother Ebony’ came in second in the calypso competition and ‘Joy C’ third and my brother ‘Tajoe’, I understand, came fourth,” Gonsalves said of calypsonians Fitzroy Joseph, Bridgette Creese, and Maxwell Francis.
(See photos of Vincy Mas 2012)
“We congratulate the CDC (Carnival Development Corporation), the Ministry of Culture for organising the activities; all those in the rural carnival … and in the city, the private sector entities which got involved with promoting shows and the like.
“Obviously, to echo the word of the Chief Executive Officer of the Carnival Development Corporation, Mr. [Ashford] Wood that it has been a splendid success – the carnival,” Gonsalves said.
He also congratulated the Police Force “who did a very good job.
“I got good reports from people about this. I want to congratulate and thank sanitation workers who again came out after the last lap last night and cleaned up the city for us. By the time we came along this morning the place was clean.
“Many people take these things for granted. But it’s part of organised society getting its work done and to get on with productive and civilised life of which the carnival itself is part of productive, social, and civilised cultural activities, particularly when we don’t have it being marred by acts of criminality, particularly violence,” Gonsalves told the media briefing.