Richard?Lord

A com­pro­mise has been reached be­tween protest­ing pan play­ers and the ex­ec­u­tive of Pan Trin­ba­go dur­ing Tues­day's four-hour meet­ing at City Hall Port-of-Spain to host the Panora­ma 2017 com­pe­ti­tion.

Protest­ing mem­bers of the Unit­ed Pan Play­ers Move­ment, led by Trinidad All Stars mem­ber, Dane Gul­ston, agreed to dis­con­tin­ue calls for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the Kei­th Di­az-led ex­ec­u­tive in the in­ter­est of the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion which is sched­uled to be­gin next week Fri­day.

The dis­en­chant­ed pan play­ers were de­mand­ing the res­ig­na­tion of the ex­ec­u­tive be­cause of a lack of trans­paren­cy and dis­re­spect. They had al­so threat­ened to boy­cott the com­pe­ti­tion. Short­ly be­fore 10 pm on Tues­day, act­ing pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Richard Forteau told the me­dia the del­e­gates at the closed-door meet­ing agreed to hold the com­pe­ti­tion.

How­ev­er, the Sin­gle Pan pre­lim­i­nar­ies, which was sched­uled to be­gin in To­ba­go on Wednes­day, will now take place next Fri­day, Forteau said.

It was not clear whether pan play­ers who were on­ly paid last week for par­tic­i­pat­ing in last year's com­pe­ti­tion have been able to cash their $1,000 cheques. Forteau said the meet­ing was "democ­ra­cy at work and the mem­ber­ship has agreed that we go for­ward with the stag­ing of the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

The is­sues and con­cerns raised by the protest­ing pan play­ers will be dealt with when the sub­stan­tive pres­i­dent of the steel band body re­turns from his three week sick leave. Di­az un­der­went an­gio­plas­ty surgery to his heart to un­clog blocked ar­ter­ies last week.

On con­cerns raised about a lack of trans­paren­cy by the ex­ec­u­tive in the pur­chase of a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle for Di­az, Forteau said "that is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of our le­gal team. We are def­i­nite­ly go­ing to clear (our name) and I am telling you from now Pan Trin­ba­go will be vin­di­cat­ed."

He in­sist­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion was the le­gal body to run Panora­ma and will con­tin­ue to do so. He said Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly failed to meet with the or­gan­i­sa­tion "to reign in" Pan Trin­ba­go to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

Forteau said Gas­d­by-Dol­ly has "added fu­el to the fire" by her pub­lic com­ments on the mat­ter.

In an in­ter­view last week, Gadb­sy-Dol­ly told the T&T Guardian she had to act to "pro­tect the tax­pay­ers' purse and the in­ter­est of the pan­men, in light of al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety in­volv­ing the steel band or­gan­i­sa­tion. Pan Trin­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion was $31 m in debt, and the Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment was "no longer be giv­ing Pan Trin­ba­go mon­ey. Prize mon­ey, mon­ey for sup­pli­ers and mon­ey for re­mit­tances for pan­men will now be made avail­able to the NCC," she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed that the min­istry is aware of the al­le­ga­tions but did not step in when the al­le­ga­tions be­came pub­lic be­cause Pan Trin­ba­go is a pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion with a mem­ber­ship to whom they should be ac­count­ing.

In re­sponse, Forteau re­it­er­at­ed Pan Trin­ba­go's au­dit­ed state­ment was pre­sent­ed by Pan­nel Kerr Fos­ter dur­ing its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing last Oc­to­ber, and he said he want­ed to know if the Min­is­ter was claim­ing that the au­di­tors "cooked our books."

He said tick­et sales were not han­dled by Pan Trin­ba­go but by a sub­sidiary com­pa­ny, Pan­vesco. The mon­ey from gate re­ceipts, es­ti­mat­ed to be over $10m, will now be col­lect­ed by the NCC, the Min­is­ter said.

Forteau said de­spite the neg­a­tive com­ments be­ing made about the or­gan­i­sa­tion he was hap­py that we could have come to­geth­er and and agreed to move on.

He said he want­ed to "tell the min­is­ter she did not get through be­cause she thought by to­day she would have been hear­ing that some of us at the morgue."

Gul­ston said the com­pro­mise was be­ing made in the in­ter­est of Panora­ma and the ad­vance­ment of Pan Trin­ba­go.

He said the prob­lems will be ad­dressed af­ter the Panora­ma.

"We will deal with our thing af­ter the Car­ni­val," he said.

Gul­ston said while "every­one may not be to­tal­ly sat­is­fied, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is big­ger. Panora­ma and Car­ni­val are big­ger than all of us."

"We have to com­pro­mise, we want to go on with the Panora­ma be­cause the world is com­ing to see us. Things have to be re­solved still but Panora­ma is go­ing to go on."

Gul­ston ad­mit­ted to got emo­tion­al dur­ing the meet­ing lat­er said he was pre­pared to move on once the pan play­ers re­ceived their re­mit­tances for 2016.