Raphael John-Lall

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) ad­min­is­tra­tion Sel­by Wil­son tes­ti­fied yes­ter­day that his "gut feel­ing" was that for­mer prime min­is­ters Patrick Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day knew that the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup was go­ing to take place. "I think Mr Pan­day and Mr Man­ning knew what was go­ing to hap­pen on that day," Wil­son said. "I will be straight­for­ward that is my gut feel­ing...Nei­ther of them seemed in doubt af­ter. "I was al­so aware that Mr Ramesh Ma­haraj had rep­re­sent­ed the Ja­maat...I have no beef with that but I was aware that he was al­so in­volved in the pol­i­tics," Wil­son told the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the at­tempt­ed coup of 1990.

The hear­ing is tak­ing place at Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain. Wil­son said his view was that many per­son­al­i­ties in the coun­try, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, con­doned ac­tions of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen be­fore the at­tempt­ed coup. Wil­son, who while un­der oath got emo­tion­al about three times, re­called that the Ja­maat had held a func­tion at Hilton Trinidad and many promi­nent peo­ple in so­ci­ety at­tend­ed. Re­call­ing a joint plat­form be­tween the NAR and the UNC in 1994 to fight two by-elec­tions, he said he told Pan­day that if the UNC was in­volved with the Ja­maat, he would not share a joint plat­form with them.

"So I was con­cerned that I was not go­ing get in­to a re­la­tion­ship to find my­self im­mersed in the Ja­maat, giv­ing po­lit­i­cal as­sis­tance to any par­ty in pow­er," Wil­son said.

"I sought to clar­i­fy that with Mr Pan­day and his re­sponse was that it is a fig­ment of my imag­i­na­tion so I told him if I join the par­ty and there is any ev­i­dence of the Ja­maat sup­port­ing your can­di­date then I will not stay on the plat­form. "That was my po­si­tion be­fore join­ing him." Wil­son told the com­mis­sion that he was not sat­is­fied with the re­sponse of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices dur­ing the coup. "I think what hap­pened on that day re­al­ly points to the fact that our se­cu­ri­ty forces were not on top of the sit­u­a­tion," he said."I don't think they were even aware that some­thing was be­ing planned... I would con­cede that there was a break­down in the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ment."

Wil­son added that there were many ru­mours about whether or not the armed forces knew there would have been an in­sur­rec­tion. "I un­der­stand that there was a road­block com­ing from the East and ve­hi­cles were be­ing in­ter­cept­ed," he said. "I un­der­stand that one of the ve­hi­cles was a WASA truck which they waved through and I un­der­stand that was the truck that car­ried the arms. "I don't know if it is true but I have heard those sto­ries.