Tokyo players in compound stand-off with used-car dealer. Pan in danger.

The Tokyo Steel Or­ches­tra will not be com­pet­ing in this year's Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, in large part due to a used-car deal­er from the John John area al­leged­ly re­fus­ing to re­move dozens of ve­hi­cles from their pan yard.

This is the first time since the in­cep­tion of the Panora­ma in 1963 that Tokyo Steel Or­ches­tra will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­pe­ti­tion.

Ear­li­er this week, Tokyo Steel Or­ches­tra's chair­man Os­wald God­dard wrote Pan Trin­ba­go in­form­ing them of the band's de­ci­sion not to par­tic­i­pate in this year's Panora­ma cit­ing "fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties" as the rea­son for the pull-out.

Judges were orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to vis­it Tokyo's pan yard next Sun­day as part of the Panora­ma pre­lim­i­nar­ies.

The own­er of the car deal­er­ship An­thon "Boom­bay" Boney has, how­ev­er, de­nied those ac­cu­sa­tions. Boney had pre­vi­ous­ly been held dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency in con­nec­tion with an al­leged as­sas­si­na­tion plot against then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He was even­tu­al­ly re­leased with­out charge and was award­ed $70,000 in dam­ages for un­law­ful de­ten­tion.

In 2014 he was al­so faced with five charges un­der the An­ti-Gang Act, in­clud­ing one for be­ing a gang leader. 

'The state of the pan yard haunts me'

The Tokyo Steel Or­ches­tra's pan yard is lo­cat­ed at 2 Plai­sance Road in John John, and is one of the last places peo­ple see be­fore they leave Port-of-Spain via the Beetham fly­over.

Paint­ed on the wall of the pan yard fac­ing the fly­over is an ad­ver­tise­ment for the car deal­er­ship which proud­ly states "we are lo­cat­ed at Tokyo Pan yard".

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By Joel Julien

Trinidad and Tobago Guardian Newspapers