It is good that we turn annually to the attempted coup d’état in Trinidad and Tobago – often reduced to the shorthand “events of 1990” - to recall the epochal physical, emotional and social violence experienced 36 years ago.
Through the haze of fast-moving time, there remains much to address from a space occupied by fact, trauma and nurtured myths.
Only once since have I publicly offered personal reflections arising from my own experience as a journalist sitting at the press table in Parliament at 6 pm on Friday, July 27, 1990.
I asked, on these pages on July 26, 2017: “1990 – Did we look for it?”
Before that, I had remained largely silent, apart from an enlightened but under-reported session hosted by MATT some years later. I chose instead to observe the competing narratives, including those advanced by former colleagues.
The unreliability of memory is often influenced by ignorance, personal bias, mischief and emotion.
However, having traversed the period once again over the past few days, we can now focus on the first post-coup sitting of the House of Representatives on August 10, 1990. For, what transpired immediately after the siege is also important.
The session was held at the Central Bank Auditorium under tight security. The press sat in that unusual setting as though attending the staging of a Raoul Pantin play.
What struck me was that the sharp political rhetoric of the period - much of it directed at the collapse of the National Alliance for Reconstruction administration. This had continued throughout and after the crisis.
Some speakers compared the violent attack with the 1970 Black Power unrest. The late Basdeo Panday, then minority opposition leader - who had remained largely silent during the crisis - introduced the concept of political “alienation.”
But the looting and destruction in Port-of-Spain in 1990 could not reasonably be equated with the broad social movement and national transformation associated with 1970. Nor could it be compared with the conditions that produced accompanying changes.
Yet, such arguments were heard as Parliament considered an extension of an existing state of emergency. Unlike today, few informed professionals seriously questioned its legitimacy relative to constitutional requirements.
Panday is recorded in the Hansard as saying: “They (government) brought this nation to where it is by their treachery.”
The implication was clear: that the government had, in some way, “looked for it.”
Over time, through rhetoric of this kind, many came to interpret the murderous attack not as a narrow conflict between the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen and the state, but as an expression of wider political discontent.
Then attorney general Anthony Smart had attempted to introduce the debate above party politics, asking the House to view the violence as “an attack on the democracy of this country” and not a partisan issue.
Opposition leader Patrick Manning responded that he was “not in a particularly combative mood,” though this posture did not hold throughout his contribution.
Opposition MP Kelvin Ramnath, unlike Manning and Panday, had himself been a hostage and had genuine grievances about the treatment of survivors. Yet, he used his contribution to allege a plot to allow hostages to die so that the government could “organise a counter right wing coup.”
Trevor Sudama, who had been wounded and held throughout the siege, raised legitimate questions about the delayed declaration of a state of emergency and called for accountability.
Manning also asked about the accumulation of arms and ammunition used by the insurgents.
But there is a difference between demanding accountability and using catastrophe as a platform for political grievance.
Prime Minister ANR Robinson had been seriously wounded and was absent for the sitting. I had heard, more than once, the view expressed that he should have died. There was no sharp condemnation of such statements from major opinion leaders then and even now.
Others did die. Families mourned. Soldiers guarded a legislature at the Central Bank because the parliamentary chamber had been damaged.
In that setting, scoring political points was not principled opposition. It was politics dressed up as democratic vigilance.
Our current reality suggests that, across the political divide, we have not learned enough from this.
The Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the 1990 attempted coup includes (in vain) recommendations on legislative reform, amnesty provisions, and ex gratia compensation for victims and their families.
It also acknowledges the significant damage suffered by targeted downtown businesses. Someday, have a look at who the owners were. Then look at the full picture and see how much of 1990 resembles 2026.
