Yvonne Ba­boolal

The De­fence Force and the for­mer Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day came in for sharp crit­i­cism for their un­pre­pared­ness to put down 1990 at­tempt­ed coup sit­u­a­tion.The crit­i­cism comes from Trinidad &To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce for­mer board di­rec­tor, An­drew John­son, who gave ev­i­dence be­fore the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the Ju­ly 27, 1990 in­sur­rec­tion by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen rebels.He was crit­i­cal of the then NAR gov­ern­ment for ig­nor­ing the warn­ings giv­en it pri­or to the bloody coup d'etat.

John­son said short­ly be­fore the up­ris­ing, the Cham­ber went to the gov­ern­ment and re­port­ed its con­cerns about Ja­maat al Mus­limeen ac­tiv­i­ties.The Cham­ber has a crime and jus­tice com­mit­tee on which a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer sits.John­son said the NAR ig­nored the Cham­ber's warn­ings.Asked by lead coun­sel if the NAR gov­ern­ment, giv­en the harsh eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances at the time, failed in open­ness, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in 1990, John­son replied in the af­fir­ma­tive.

"I would have to say yes. How else would you ac­count for the coup?" he asked.He fur­ther told the com­mis­sion he be­lieved the army was un­able to han­dle the up­ris­ing.He re­called that on the fate­ful day most of the of­fi­cers were at­tend­ing two foot­ball match­es at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and at Pres­i­dent's Grounds re­spec­tive­ly.John­son said an in­suf­fi­cient num­ber of sol­diers were left at the bar­racks and Brigadier Ralph Brown, com­mand­ing of­fi­cer at the time, had to go to the sta­di­um to round up army of­fi­cers, and Coast Guards­men for back­up, when the Mus­limeen were on the ram­page.

He rec­om­mend­ed that a suf­fi­cient num­ber of army of­fi­cers al­ways be sta­tioned at the bar­racks in case of an emer­gency.John­son al­so in­sist­ed that the po­lice should share in­for­ma­tion crit­i­cal to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty with the army.Ear­li­er, Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers who gave ev­i­dence at the en­quiry, like Ken­neth Thomp­son, said the in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing unit is not re­quired to share in­for­ma­tion with the army.

He said the unit is man­dat­ed chiefly to re­port to the Prime Min­is­ter, not even the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.John­son was asked by com­mis­sion chair­man Sir David Sim­mons whether the po­lice of­fi­cer on the Cham­ber's crime com­mit­tee does not give them po­lice sta­tis­tics.In a tone of frus­tra­tion he replied, "On­ly if you ask."If you know the tor­ture and dif­fi­cul­ty we have to ex­pe­ri­ence to get sta­tis­tics."They hold on to it as if it's ter­ri­to­ry. They just don't want to let go."You have to write let­ters and if you do get the sta­tis­tics it's usu­al­ly too late in the game."

As a mat­ter of fact, this hold­ing on tight­ly to sta­tis­tics is some­thing every sin­gle or­gan­i­sa­tion in T&T does, John­son charged.