Richard Lord

The Gov­ern­ment is to es­tab­lish a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the bloody Ju­ly 27, 1990, at­tempt­ed coup by the Yasin Abu Bakr-led Ja­maat al Mus­limeen.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed that dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at her of­fice in St Clair. She said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed to the full-scale pub­lic probe be­cause of calls over the past 20 years "by a gen­er­ous per­cent­age of our pop­u­la­tion for such an in­ves­ti­ga­tion." She in­sist­ed that the probe was not be­ing com­mis­sioned be­cause of any po­lit­i­cal pres­sure. Among those call­ing for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion were Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and for­mer prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son, who was shot and held hostage by the in­sur­gents dur­ing the at­tempt­ed over­throw of his du­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the in­quiry was nec­es­sary be­cause there was a need to bring fi­nal­i­ty to this mat­ter; cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­enced vary­ing de­grees and cat­e­gories of trau­ma–di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly–as a re­sult of the in­ci­dent, and the need for cit­i­zens to get psy­cho­log­i­cal re­lief.

"We feel it is im­por­tant for us to have this in­quiry to find out what went wrong and why it hap­pened, so that we could take steps to avoid such a thing ever hap­pen­ing in this coun­try again," the PM said. "No one is above the law and there­fore if there is ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing, wher­ev­er it might be, that wrong­do­ing will have to be dealt with by the courts of law." The names of the com­mis­sion­ers are ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Pres­i­dent next week and work will be­gin as soon as pos­si­ble, she added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is al­so chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil said: "We know that in 1990 firearms were brought in­to the coun­try to ser­vice the in­tent of the in­sur­gents (and) to­day we are plagued with a pro­lif­er­a­tion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in T&T."

She ad­mit­ted that "most of the crimes be­ing per­pe­trat­ed are those crimes, es­pe­cial­ly the mur­ders, that en­tail the use of firearms." She list­ed that as an ad­di­tion­al rea­son for the probe to be con­duct­ed. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­firmed that a threat on her life was made on Wednes­day. "Yes, I am ad­vised that a young at­tor­ney who had worked with me in the past was ap­proached/ac­cost­ed, what­ev­er it may be, out­side the court­room and was told to give me a mes­sage," the PM said. "Such a threat was made yes­ter­day and be­cause of the word­ing, it would ap­pear that the al­le­ga­tion points to per­sons who may have been as­so­ci­at­ed with the lands and, there­fore, the sale of the lands. "The way the al­le­ga­tion was phrased, we can­not say for sure, but the per­son did give a mes­sage that in­di­cat­ed it could be per­sons whose lands (prop­er­ty) would be put up for auc­tion."

Asked if she shared the view of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning that death threats formed a part of her job as PM, she said she did not. "I don't think a per­son's life be­ing threat­ened is a nor­mal part of any job, but when I took this job, I stopped be­ing afraid," she said. "I am not afraid, we will do our du­ty, we will do what we have to do," she in­sist­ed. Asked if the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed re­tal­i­a­tion from the de­ci­sion to sell all the Mus­limeen prop­er­ty by pub­lic auc­tion on the 20th an­niver­sary of the coup, next Tues­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed: "In life you ex­pect any­thing." She said the se­cu­ri­ty forces "will be on alert as it has been for quite some time now."