Yvonne Ba­boolal

In 1988, two years be­fore the Ju­ly 27, 1990 in­sur­rec­tion by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­gents, then Port-of-Spain South MP Theodore Guer­ra warned gov­ern­ment MPs of a "seething wrath" among the frus­trat­ed mass­es, say­ing that their main tar­get will be the gov­ern­ment. This was dis­closed yes­ter­day by then fel­low MP in the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment, Ray­mond Palack­d­harys­ingh, as he gave ev­i­dence be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the coup at­tempt at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain.

Palack­d­harys­ingh, NAR gen­er­al sec­re­tary at the time, said Guer­ra, now a Se­nior Coun­sel, wrote him a let­ter on Feb­ru­ary 5, 1988, say­ing he was grave­ly con­cerned about the "des­ti­tu­tion, de­spair and des­per­a­tion" of the av­er­age man in the street, es­pe­cial­ly the un­em­ployed. "There are ru­mours that DEWD (a tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment pro­gramme) has been closed and there is no hope of ob­tain­ing em­ploy­ment and re­lief for the present sit­u­a­tion for tens of thou­sands of cit­i­zens of T&T," Guer­ra wrote. He con­tin­ued: "The fa­cade of mer­ri­ment that em­braces this Car­ni­val sea­son is mere­ly but a ten­u­ous cork on a steam­ing caul­dron of dis­sent and dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

"Im­me­di­ate­ly the Car­ni­val is over, I feel the frus­tra­tion of the mass­es will be let loose and the main tar­get will be the gov­ern­ment. "It is the feel­ing on the streets that we are the tools of the rich and big busi­ness­men and that this gov­ern­ment holds no hope of re­lief for the poor and the un­em­ployed and that we have be­trayed all those who have sup­port­ed us." Guer­ra fur­ther warned: "It is with this in mind that I be­lieve that this Gov­ern­ment must, and I stress must, make some state­ment on the un­em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion...so as to save the coun­try from the wrath that is now seething." Palack­d­harys­ingh said he read the let­ter in Par­lia­ment and said he be­lieved Guer­ra sent copies to oth­er MPs.

He said there was no re­sponse from the lead­er­ship and he did not raise it at the par­ty lev­el, ei­ther.

"All of us, in a cor­po­rate sense, were not pay­ing at­ten­tion to what was hap­pen­ing," he said. Not­ing he felt Guer­ra's feel­ings were an ac­cu­rate analy­sis of the gen­er­al sen­ti­ment at the time, Palack­d­harys­ingh said there was a "se­ri­ous dis­con­nect" be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple. No in­for­ma­tion was shared about the re­al eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion of the coun­try with the mass­es or even the par­ty, he said. Palack­d­harys­ingh said af­ter the 1990 up­ris­ing the op­po­si­tion par­ty, head­ed by Bas­deo Pan­day, nev­er made an of­fi­cial state­ment in Par­lia­ment in the trag­ic event. He said: "The feel­ing with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion at the time was that the mat­ter shouldn't be brought up. "My per­cep­tion was that it was not in the in­ter­est of the par­ty to do so." Palack­d­harys­ingh said Patrick Man­ning, leader of the PNM, which was trounced 33/3 at the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion, wrote him a let­ter ex­press­ing his re­lief about his safe de­liv­er­ance from the cri­sis.

"The vi­o­lent at­tack on the sanc­ti­ty of our democ­ra­cy, free­dom and na­tion­hood in which your life was placed in per­il is a re­minder to us all that we must ever be vig­i­lant in up­hold­ing these ideals that we hold dear," Man­ning wrote. Palack­d­harys­ingh told the com­mis­sion he knew Pan­day since the for­ma­tion of the Work­ers and Farm­ers Par­ty in 1956 and said he (Pan­day) nev­er wrote him such a let­ter. He said he felt be­trayed by Pan­day's al­leged state­ment, "wake me up when it's over", which he re­port­ed­ly told some­one in a tele­phone call dur­ing the Red House hostage cri­sis. Palack­d­harys­ingh said he knew noth­ing about any re­la­tion­ship be­tween the UNC and the Jam­mat. The en­quiry re­sumes on Mon­day with Glo­ria Hen­ry and Sel­by Wil­son giv­ing ev­i­dence.

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For­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, is among more than 90-plus wit­ness­es who will be called to give ev­i­dence be­fore the com­mis­sion "in due sea­son", com­mis­sion chair­man, Sir David Sim­mons said yes­ter­day. Sim­mons made the dis­clo­sure af­ter Palack­d­harys­ingh, while giv­ing ev­i­dence yes­ter­day, sug­gest­ed to the com­mis­sion that they call Man­ning.