Car­ol Quash

Un­ex­pect­ed ex­plo­sions, fires, gun­shots, loot­ing, and hostage tak­ing. Bod­ies strewn in the streets of a burnt out-city, a city that was just end­ing the work-week, and had plans for a week­end of pre-In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions. Sounds like the fic­tion­al work of the mas­ter of es­pi­onage and may­hem, the late Robert Lud­lum? Well its not. Its the per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tion of the ex­pe­ri­ences of jour­nal­ist, Den­nis Mc­Comie, dur­ing and im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup d etat that rocked T&T ex­act­ly 20 years ago to the date. Its amaz­ing how af­ter two decades, Mc­Comie has been able to give such vivid de­tails of the sights, sounds, emo­tions, scents, and con­ver­sa­tions that per­vad­ed dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

A clue­less jour­nal­ist

The pub­li­ca­tion be­gins by ex­plor­ing the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences be­tween the two front­line char­ac­ters–Mc­Comie and Imam Yasin Abu Bakr - set­ting the stage for the ul­ti­mate "bac­cha­nal" that fol­lows. In 1990: The Per­son­al Ac­count of a Jour­nal­ist Un­der Seige, Mc­Comie re­calls how fate and his jour­nal­is­tic in­stinct took him back to the NBS build­ing on Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain, fol­low­ing the mas­sive ex­plo­sion at the Po­lice Head­quar­ters a mere sec­onds be­fore six o' clock on Ju­ly 27, 1990. Mc­Comie had left the NBS build­ing just a few min­utes ear­li­er, and at the time, had no idea what had caused the ex­plo­sion. Nor was he aware that the coun­try was un­der seige.

He re­calls wit­ness­ing the chaos in the streets be­low, from his van­tage point of the fourth floor bal­cony of the build­ing, which he lat­er found out was not as safe as he had thought. He re­counts the fire at­tacks on the two low­er floors of the build­ing, and how he was forced to as­sume lead­er­ship of the skele­tal staff at the ra­dio sta­tion–a staff and sta­tion that lat­er be­came the eyes and ears of T&T and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ests dur­ing the or­deal. He re­lives his blood boil­ing emo­tions when Bakr brazen­ly ad­dressed the na­tion short­ly af­ter 7 pm, via the tele­vi­sion sta­tion TTT, where sev­er­al mem­bers of staff were be­ing held hostage. He lauds the hard work of the NBS team, and the count­less callers to the news­room, from whom he drew in­spi­ra­tion to con­tin­ue broad­cast­ing. He ex­plains the role the soul­ful mu­sic of Ken­ny G played dur­ing the first hours of the cri­sis.

NBS, the win­dow to T&T

Mc­Comie ex­plains how, with the de­lib­er­ate cut-off of the TTT broad­cast sig­nal by the au­thor­i­ties, the then linked 100FM and 610AM be­came the win­dow to T&T for the pub­lic and the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, as well as fa­cil­i­ta­tor to some of the ma­jor play­ers in the game–among them, Bakr him­self, who called the sta­tion and was sub­ject­ed to a can­did on-the-air in­ter­view by Mc­Comie. Mc­Comie re­calls the frus­tra­tion of be­ing torn be­tween his in­abil­i­ty to piece the en­tire puz­zle to­geth­er, and giv­ing the pub­lic the in­for­ma­tion and hope they so des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Re­ports of an amnesty; an or­der by then At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, An­tho­ny Smart, for NBS to cease broad­cast­ing news and in­ter­views; the even­tu­al re­lease of the hostages from TTT and the Red House, and the sur­ren­der and de­ten­tion of Bakr and his fol­low­ers on Au­gust 1; his near death ex­pe­ri­ence pri­or to a press con­fer­ence on that same day; his de­par­ture for Lon­don; and his bat­tle with post trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, are all ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Mc­Comie as events that will be etched in his mem­o­ry for a life­time.

When the smoke cleared

Mc­Comie's bit­ter­ness to­ward the Imam for the events of Ju­ly 27, 1990 are not lost in the de­scrip­tive chap­ters, nor are his al­lu­sions to the roles played by cer­tain char­ac­ters in the book in one of the dark­est pe­ri­ods in the his­to­ry of T&T. While the pub­li­ca­tion at­tests to his ad­her­ence to the jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ple of re­port­ing facts dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup, it para­dox­i­cal­ly high­lights his forth­right opin­ions re­gard­ing cer­tain as­pects of the ter­ri­fy­ing or­deal. On a lighter note, one of his burn­ing ques­tions then and now re­mains, why weren't the 40 sand­wich­es de­liv­ered to TTT? While that ques­tion may nev­er be an­swered, at least the very last ques­tion in the pages of 1990: The Per­son­al Ac­count of a Jour­nal­ist Un­der Seige, was an­swered by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar at the Post Cab­i­net Press Con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 22.