Raphael John-Lall

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has waived the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty orig­i­nal­ly im­posed on one chap­ter of the Re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.In Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, she an­nounced, "The re­port con­tains four vol­umes and chap­ter 12, con­tained in vol­ume 4, was deemed con­fi­den­tial and we re­spect the com­mis­sion for this.

"But af­ter due de­lib­er­a­tion at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mis­sion, the Gov­ern­ment agreed that we would waive con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and place the en­tire re­port in the pub­lic do­main. We did not want the re­port to be shad­owed. There is noth­ing to hide."She con­grat­u­lat­ed all the com­mis­sion­ers on all their work.The re­port was com­mis­sioned by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment in 2010 and was pre­sent­ed to Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona at his St Ann's of­fice the pre­vi­ous day by chair­man of the com­mis­sion Sir David Sim­mons QC.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the re­port was im­por­tant for the coun­try as it sought to pro­vide "valu­able an­swers" com­ing out of that coup at­tempt."The re­port refers to sit­ting MPs be­ing vic­tims of un­speak­able in­dig­ni­ties, of the wan­ton acts of de­struc­tion of our ven­er­a­ble par­lia­men­tary cham­ber in the his­toric Red House. It re­minds us that our Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter at the time, Mr ANR Robin­son, and his Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Mr Sel­wyn Richard­son, were sin­gled out, bad­ly beat­en and then shot in their legs," she said.

She said she was sad­dened at the down­turn in health of Robin­son, al­so a for­mer Pres­i­dent, and whom she had briefly vis­it­ed yes­ter­day as he was cur­rent­ly hos­pi­talised."The vis­it was brief, giv­en the pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances, but I want­ed to con­vey to His Ex­cel­len­cy the fact that the com­mis­sion of en­quiry, which he deeply urged I should es­tab­lish, had com­plet­ed its mon­u­men­tal task and had pre­sent­ed its re­port to the Pres­i­dent.

"Mr Robin­son called for this re­port for so many years and strong­ly urged that any gov­ern­ment I should lead should set up a com­mis­sion of en­quiry. He was cen­tral to the events that un­fold­ed when in­sur­gents stormed the Par­lia­ment on that fate­ful evening of Ju­ly 27, 1990," she said.

Rec­om­men­da­tions

Per­sad-Bisses­sar read out to Par­lia­ment a num­ber of the re­port's rec­om­men­da­tions.She said there was a prob­lem with in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing by the rel­e­vant agen­cies, as the re­port had found.She al­so said the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion was a fac­tor that af­fect­ed the law-en­force­ment agen­cies' be­ing pre­pared, quot­ing the re­port as say­ing in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing "was loose and hap­haz­ard."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about the "in­ter­est­ing dis­cov­ery" by the com­mis­sion of the "knee­jerk de­ci­sion" to es­tab­lish the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (SAUTT)."SAUTT," she read from the re­port, "was not an or­gan­i­sa­tion that was wel­comed by most arms of the se­cu­ri­ty struc­ture, be­cause it was seen to be do­ing things that oth­er peo­ple were al­ready do­ing and there was a per­ceived du­pli­ca­tion of ef­fort."She said what SAUTT failed to do the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre is do­ing now, since it was set up by this Gov­ern­ment.

Click to read the full re­port on­the T&T Par­lia­ment web­site.