Richard?Lord

Pan­men are ex­pect­ed to stage a plac­ard demon­stra­tion out­side Pan Trin­ba­go of­fice on Park Street, Port-of-Spain, to­mor­row, de­mand­ing the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az and his en­tire ex­ec­u­tive.

And for the 2017 Car­ni­val sea­son, pan­men may stage their own event called "Pan­drome" with the sup­port of pri­vate spon­sors.

These two sug­ges­tions came out of a spe­cial meet­ing of pan­nists held at All Stars pa­n­yard in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day to dis­cuss mat­ters of con­cern, in­clud­ing the lead­er­ship of the move­ment and the non-pay­ment of mon­ey owed to them for work done last year.

Among those who at­tend­ed the meet­ing were in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-known pan­nist and Phase 11 Pan Groove arranger, Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, who made the ini­tial call for Wednes­day's protest.

Pan­men have claimed they were be­ing treat­ed with dis­re­spect by the Di­az-led or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Fol­low­ing a spe­cial Pan Trin­ba­go meet­ing at City Hall, Port-of-Spain last week Wednes­day, dis­grun­tled pan­nists sug­gest­ed that there would be no Panora­ma this year.

Sev­er­al speak­ers at yes­ter­day's open meet­ing ex­pressed their dis­plea­sure about the Pan Trin­ba­go lead­er­ship and re­newed calls for the stag­ing of 2017 Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion to be boy­cotted.

One pan­man said: "Pan Trin­ba­go now op­press­ing pan play­ers in­stead of rep­re­sent­ing them. Pan Trin­ba­go putting pan play­ers last and the ex­ec­u­tive first."

He said pan play­ers must es­tab­lish a union or group to rep­re­sent them, in­sist­ing that the or­gan­i­sa­tion's con­sti­tu­tion should be changed to al­low for an ex­ec­u­tive to be elect­ed by a one-man-one-vote sys­tem in­stead of the ex­ist­ing del­e­gate sys­tem .

Sharpe in his com­ments said: "This whole pan thing, it has to change. The ex­ec­u­tive should go. They should not even at­tempt to run Panora­ma 2017." He said a plac­ard demon­stra­tion can start the process to have the Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive re­moved from of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Sharpe, the pick­et demon­stra­tion could even be tak­en to the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence. "Let us think dras­tic. We have to come out and pick­et. Get a plac­ard."

Oth­er pan­men told the meet­ing their con­cern was not on­ly the non-pay­ment of $1,000 to pan play­ers for last year's Panora­ma, but the mis­man­age­ment by the ex­ec­u­tive.

One pan­man said Pan Trin­ba­go does not rep­re­sent play­ers but the bands.

Gre­go­ry Lind­say, chair­man and man­ag­er of Pow­er Stars Steel Or­ches­tra called on pan­men to stand unit­ed. He said: "We must prac­tice the prin­ci­ples of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. We must stand up right now and de­mand that the ex­ec­u­tive stand down."

Lind­say said if pan­men don't en­gage in such ac­tion "this would be our death knell."

Ex­press­ing sup­port for the boy­cott of the 2017 Panora­ma, Lind­say sug­gest­ed that pan­men should par­tic­i­pate in a break­away event sim­i­lar to the one or­gan­ised by protest­ing mas bands dur­ing Car­ni­val in pre­vi­ous years at the Jean Pierre Com­plex.

"We might have a Pan­drome where pri­vate sec­tor would get in­volved out­side of Pan Trin­ba­go (to sponser the event), said Lind­say, re­call­ing that oth­er events like Pan on the Av­enue were arranged with­out any as­sis­tance from Pan Trin­ba­go.

PAN TRIN­BA­GO: PAN PLAY­ERS UN­IN­FORMED

Pan Trin­ba­go pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Michael Joseph, is ex­press­ing his "dis­gust and in­dig­na­tion" at "a few mis­guid­ed, un­in­formed pan play­ers," who at­tend­ed last week Wednes­day's gen­er­al mem­ber­ship meet­ing at City Hall, Port of Spain

The meet­ing was held to dis­cuss play­ers' re­mit­tances for 2016 and the fu­ture of Panora­ma 2017.

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az was forced to abort the meet­ing as some mem­bers were de­mand­ing a boy­cott of the 2017 Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion over the un­re­solved mon­ey mat­ters.

Joseph said on Face­book yes­ter­day that: "It was clear to me that some peo­ple came with an agen­da in­im­i­cal to the best in­ter­est of Pan Trin­ba­go,"

Joseph said while he be­lieved mem­bers were en­ti­tled to their own views in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion, "when they are filled with ma­li­cious ac­cu­sa­tions and hos­til­i­ty, that is a horse of a dif­fer­ent colour."

In­di­cat­ing that while he was still mak­ing a "valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to­wards the ad­vance­ment and pro­tec­tion of the fu­ture of the steel­pan" he was be­ing dis­re­spect­ed by "mis­in­formed, mis­guid­ed in­di­vid­u­als, who have no sense of val­ue and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for con­trib­u­tors."

Joseph said some of them who were "on­ly in­ter­est­ed in their own wel­fare."