DAVID CUFFY

The three dai­ly news­pa­pers all car­ried the ad­ver­tise­ment on Fri­day, De­cem­ber 3, last year. "Pan Trin­ba­go Apol­o­gy to Ex­o­dus" screamed the head­line over the body of text that stat­ed in its fi­nal para­graph: "In an ef­fort to re­solve this mat­ter which has been un­der le­gal con­sid­er­a­tion since then, Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus has agreed to ac­cept the sum of $1 rep­re­sent­ing dam­ages." What had the Caribbean Panora­ma, World Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val and Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­ons done to be­come em­broiled in a le­gal mat­ter with Pan Trin­ba­go and, af­ter be­ing vic­to­ri­ous,set­tle for just one dol­lar?

This had al­ways piqued my cu­rios­i­ty, so I felt com­pelled to get the facts now that Panora­ma 2011 is here, and es­pe­cial­ly as Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus did not make it to the fi­nal last year. Ac­cord­ing to band man­ag­er Ainsworth Mo­hammed, the mat­ter stemmed from an in­ci­dent on stage at the Na­tion­al Panora­ma fi­nal­sof2009 when the band was­forced to re­duce its com­ple­ment of play­ers­for what Pan Trin­ba­go claimed was ex­ceed­ing the play­er lim­it on stage. "Pri­or to 2009, large bands were al­lowed to field 120 play­ers in the Panora­ma," ex­plained Mo­hammed."How­ev­er, Pan Trin­ba­go de­cid­ed to re­duce the num­ber to 100 at an ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing called to dis­cuss the is­sue on No­vem­ber 29, 2008."

Af­ter ob­jec­tions to the de­ci­sion aired at the meet­ing with some of the large bands, the or­gan­i­sa­tion's then pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold agreed, through an amend­ment, to re­verse the de­ci­sion and al­low the large bands to com­pete with 120 play­ers. Mo­hammed point­ed out, how­ev­er, be­fore the se­mi-fi­nal round of com­pe­ti­tion, that Arnold called a meet­ing in Pan Trin­ba­go's car park to say he had erred in is­su­ing the amend­ment, so the de­ci­sion tak­en at the ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing­had to be en­forced.

"But as far as Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus was con­cerned that ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al,in thatthe rules were breached," said Mo­hammed. "Bands did not re­ceive the stip­u­lat­ed 30 days ad­van­ceno­tice, the spe­cif­ic agen­da was not­statedand there was no quo­rum for the meet­ing. "To make mat­ters worse, all present at that meet­ing were al­lowed to vote whether you were a del­e­gate or not. "What should be not­ed is that over the years bands were nev­er has­sled for play­ing with num­bers in ex­cess of the "stip­u­lat­ed" amount.

"Large bands do not ever con­cern them­selves about num­bers as they are ful­ly aware of the fact that the qual­i­ty and ex­e­cu­tion of the mu­sic is what re­al­ly mat­ters." At the end of the se­mi-fi­nal round of Panora­ma 2009, Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus was sec­ond to Phase II Pan Groove by a mere two points. "But we learned that Arnold said he want­ed to 'break up the big five'-Des­per­a­does, Phase II, All Stars, Rene­gades and Ex­o­dus," said Mo­hammed.

"So on the night of the fi­nal some­one called and told him we were ap­pear­ing with more than 100 play­ers. I called him one hour be­fore the start on his cell phone to en­quire, and he ad­mit­ted that he re­ceived the call, but said he 'was not tak­ing on that.' "Yet, when we went on stage we were de­layed for near­ly 45 min­utes by­Pan Trin­ba­go per­son­nel and po­lice who were there to en­sure law and or­der and not to de­ter­mine the num­bers in bands. "Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus wasthe sec­ond in play­ing po­si­tion, but the first of the "pow­er" bands.Wead­mit­ted to the of­fi­cials that we had 124 play­ers, and we were bul­lied by them and the Po­lice to re­duce the num­bers to 100. This was nev­er done be­fore by any past pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go.

"We com­plied in­order not to fur­ther de­lay the show and in the in­ter­est of the pay­ing pa­trons and a 'live' tele­vi­sion au­di­ence. "At the end of the per­for­mance,two mem­bers of the then ex­ec­u­tive of Pan Trin­bagorushed to the judges' en­clo­sure de­mand­ing that no marks be scored for us, and we should be dis­qual­i­fied. When the re­sults were an­nounced, the band placed sixth." Some will be of the view that all the bands were re­quest­ed there­after to per­form with 100 play­ers and there­fore the play­ing field would have been lev­eled. Fact is, checks re­vealed that oth­er bands had the ben­e­fit of ad­vance no­tice, al­beit on the same night, but they were not sub­ject­ed to ha­rass­ment by Pan Trin­ba­go of­fi­cials and the po­lice. They al­so were not seen as hav­ing de­layed the show by some 45 min­utes.

Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus was de­ter­mined to clear its name and its im­age of dis­ci­pline and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and so em­ployed the ser­vices of at­tor­ney El­ton Prescott, SC. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween at­tor­neys be­gan in May 2009, with a view of com­ing to some am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment and to avoid go­ing to court. Af­ter re­view­ing the facts, Patrick Arnold ad­mit­ted ver­bal­ly that the or­gan­i­sa­tion had erred. But be­fore arrange­ments for set­tle­ment were agreed to, he was vot­ed out of of­fice. The new pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go Kei­th Di­az, up­on as­sum­ing of­fice in late 2009 and af­ter hear­ing the facts, con­ced­ed that Pan Trin­ba­go was at fault, and sought an out-of-court set­tle­ment of the mat­ter.

In recog­ni­tion of the fact that Di­az and his new ad­min­is­tra­tion were not to be blamed, Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus agreed to set­tle un­der the fol­low­ing con­di­tions:

•a pub­lic apol­o­gy word­ed to its sat­is­fac­tion in the three dai­ly news­pa­pers;

•pan Trin­ba­go meet all le­gal costs; and

•ac­knowl­edg­ing that dam­age would have been in­curred with re­spect to "loss of earn­ings" and "rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­ages."

Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus had agreed to ac­cept the nom­i­nal sum of $1 in set­tle­ment.

When pressed for a rea­son for ac­cept­ing such a sum af­ter all the ef­fort, time and en­er­gy in get­ting Pan Trin­ba­go's ad­mis­sion that it was at fault, Mo­hammed said: "Ex­o­dus was borno­ut of prin­ci­ple, and in fair­ness to the new Pan Trin­ba­go ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Kei­th Di­az, though we need­ed the mon­ey al­so, we just could not bring our­selves to ex­ploit the sit­u­a­tion which was not of their mak­ing. "We are al­so hop­ing that no steel­band will ever be sub­ject­ed­to this kind of treat­ment and dis­re­spect in the fu­ture," he added.