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.