Gail Alexan­der

While high lev­el past and present se­cu­ri­ty lead­ers have rat­ed T&T's se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems as hav­ing im­proved since the 1990 coup at­tempt, op­po­si­tion politi­cians have giv­en it a thumbs-down. Chief of De­fence Staff Ed­mund Dil­lon is in con­cur­rence with re­tired Colonel Ralph Brown–who had head­ed the army in 1990–on the view that the armed forces are in bet­ter shape to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of the coup at­tempt.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day and COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an, how­ev­er, be­lieve that se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems were no bet­ter off–and may, in fact, be worse. How­ev­er both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers were di­vid­ed on whether an in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be held in­to the events of 1990 as for­mer prime min­is­ter Arthur NR Robin­son has re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ed. Pan­day was not in the Par­lia­ment build­ing on Ju­ly 27, 1990, while Dook­er­an was among the hostages.

Chief of De­fence Staff in 1990 Brigadier Col Ralph Brown:

"I can say for a fact that most def­i­nite­ly the De­fence Force is more well-equipped to han­dle any such mat­ter than it was in 1990. While I left the ser­vice 15 years ago I still keep abreast of things and one of the is­sues that ham­pered us in 1990–the shar­ing of in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion–has been ad­dressed now. "The De­fence Force is now work­ing more close­ly with the po­lice, which was not the case in 1990. In fact I think that was the fail­ing of 1990–the po­lice didn't share any in­tel­li­gence with us and we were left in the dark. But the ex­act op­po­site is true to­day. Both forces now work more close­ly and that's a good sign, which should con­tin­ue and will cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit T&T."

Chief of De­fence Staff Ed­mund Dil­lon:

"The De­fence Force has grown tremen­dous­ly over the 19 years since 1990. We have done a par­tial in-house de­brief­ing of our sit­u­a­tion with re­gards to the coup at­tempt and we con­tin­ue with the ex­er­cise on an on-go­ing ba­sis. We must, be­cause we feel this type of ex­er­cise must be a con­tin­u­ing one to build our ca­pac­i­ty. So I can as­sure the pub­lic that the De­fence Force, which com­pris­es the army, coast guard, air guard and re­serve, stands ready to en­sure that nev­er again will a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion oc­cur in T&T." "We stand ready to de­fend the sov­er­eign­ty of T&T and to en­sure that our pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to live in a safe, se­cure en­vi­ron­ment. We al­so con­tin­ue to lend our sup­port to law en­force­ment and en­sure the pro­tec­tion of our mar­itime and aer­i­al bor­ders."

Bas­deo Pan­day:

"How one mea­sures se­cu­ri­ty per­tains to a broad­er per­spec­tive than on­ly pre­vent­ing sit­u­a­tions like 1990. It al­so has to do with the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty and how crime has in­creased. There­fore we are in a worse po­si­tion than we were in 1990, be­cause there has been a me­te­oric rise in the crime rate over­all. "The in­tel­li­gence as­pect al­so en­com­pass­es equip­ment and while they may have more equip­ment, it is a sit­u­a­tion of what are they us­ing it for. The PNM has al­ways known who is bring­ing the guns and drugs in­to T&T, which they say con­tin­ue to come here. But there has been no shift in the sit­u­a­tion ex­cept where Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion is con­cerned.

"Al­so, 1990 was a long time ago and I don't know what ben­e­fits an in­quiry in­to the events of 1990 would serve now and whether there would be ev­i­dence be­cause some peo­ple may have died, for­got­ten or moved away. But if the na­tion­al con­science will be salved by an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the pub­lic wants it, there should be one. "How­ev­er I think the mon­ey would be bet­ter spent on deal­ing with crime and if Gov­ern­ment launch­es in­quiries in­to al­le­ga­tions of eth­nic cleans­ing and oth­er is­sues."

Win­ston Dook­er­an:

"One of the key lessons of 1990 in­volves the state of se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence in T&T, since we had a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty lapse then. But I don't know if this has been im­proved at all–I don't get the im­pres­sion that it has and that we have learned from 1990 in this re­gard. If we had bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence we could have bet­ter de­tec­tion of un­re­solved crimes, which is a grow­ing cat­e­go­ry. That alone sig­nals that se­cu­ri­ty needs im­prove­ment. "I ful­ly sup­port calls for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to 1990. It is true that with years, peo­ple's mem­o­ries may have be­come less acute but the probe is nec­es­sary to set the record straight and an­swer the ques­tions that linger about 1990. In a po­lit­i­cal sense it is al­so ap­pro­pri­ate in or­der to un­der­stand why the cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Leader, Bas­deo Pan­day, and the Op­po­si­tion Leader of 1990, Patrick Man­ning, have not con­demned the coup at­tempt to date. "Some­one said we could have a cit­i­zen's com­mis­sion of en­quiry, but you would still need Gov­ern­ment sanc­tion to ac­cess records. We al­so need con­sti­tu­tion­al change to im­ple­ment mech­a­nisms to en­sure a chair­man can be ap­point­ed to act as Prime Min­is­ter in the event such a sit­u­a­tion oc­curs again."