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Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Coudray apologises to panmen

by

20101123

Com­ments by San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray about po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the can­cel­la­tion of last week­end's Pan in the City has drawn crit­i­cism from Pan Trin­ba­go and for­mer San Fer­nan­do West MP Ju­nia Re­grel­lo.El­ton Bain, chair­man of Pan Trin­ba­go South/Cen­tral Re­gion, said pan­men were po­lit­i­cal­ly neu­tral.

He said he did not know how pol­i­tics came in­to this ac­tiv­i­ty, when the steel­band body was on­ly try­ing to get a prop­er deal for its mem­bers.

He said pan play­ers de­cid­ed to with­draw from the com­pe­ti­tion be­cause the city of­fered to pay an ap­pear­ance fee of $3,000, in­stead of the $5,000 they re­quest­ed.

Coudray clar­i­fied, yes­ter­day, that the state­ment was not aimed at the pan body and apol­o­gised for any mis­un­der­stand­ing. She said, how­ev­er, the re­quest was un­rea­son­able, com­ing two days be­fore the event. She said she re­fused to be held to ran­som.Re­grel­lo, CEO of TCL Skif­fle Bunch Steel Or­ches­tra, said be­cause he wore the hats of both pan­man and politi­cian, fin­gers had been point­ing at him.

Re­grel­lo and Coudray are old po­lit­i­cal foes, hav­ing con­test­ed the San Fer­nan­do West seat in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion.Re­grel­lo said it was in 2003, un­der may­or Ian Ather­ly's watch, he was con­ven­er when they de­vel­oped the city cel­e­bra­tions to in­clude pan and the launch of Car­ni­val."That is our tem­plate she is us­ing," he claimed, ex­plain­ing that in the first year, South pan­men did not par­tic­i­pate be­cause they did not have the mon­ey to pay them.

He said, how­ev­er, that a prece­dent had been set from 2004 right up to 2009 to pay the pan­men for their ser­vices.He lashed out at the may­or, ac­cus­ing her of be­ing dis­re­spect­ful to the pan­men. He said Coudray was able to get mon­ey for the Gulf of Paria boat cruise, to trans­form King's Wharf in­to a restau­rant and for oth­er forms of en­ter­tain­ment, but had no mon­ey for the pan­men.

Dis­tanc­ing him­self from the de­ci­sion to boy­cott, Re­grel­lo said it was the may­or who was play­ing pol­i­tics. He al­so ac­cused her of de­lib­er­ate­ly leav­ing Cof­fee Street, where his steel­band is lo­cat­ed, out of the mas.

Re­grel­lo said for the past six to sev­en years, the Car­ni­val launch had tak­en place at his pa­n­yard.This year, how­ev­er, it re­turned to Har­ris Prom­e­nade, which he de­scribed as a grave­yard.

"Be­fore Skif­fle Bunch came here, this was the venue that was used by the OW­TU, Joe White com­pe­ti­tion and the City Cor­po­ra­tion...Now all of a sud­den you want to car­ry it some­where else."He said the may­or should ac­knowl­edge that she was not a Car­ni­val per­son and since this was her first time, she made an er­ror. He said she apol­o­gised to the pan­men and hoped to do bet­ter next time.


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