To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Twen­ty years af­ter, but not too late to hear in de­tail the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the events of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup on the democ­ra­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go. That suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments and the pop­u­la­tion could have al­lowed the years to go by with­out such a com­mis­sion of en­quiry as be­ing held now is be­yond un­der­stand­ing. But thank­ful­ly, it has start­ed. We ex­pect too that there will be need for the hear­ings to be ex­tend­ed and per­haps the scope widened be­cause there are many de­tails, claims and counter claims to be probed. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at the mo­ment un­der deep scruti­ny for the so ob­vi­ous blun­ders sur­round­ing the ap­point­ment of Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine, should take a mo­ment out of her stress and re­ceive cred­it for hav­ing the courage to do what her pre­de­ces­sors failed to do for 20 long years.

Al­ready, we have heard then prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son go in­to some de­tail about the events in the Red House on that day of shame, and very sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions, as he re­lat­ed them, that went on be­fore the days on which the ac­tu­al coup was at­tempt­ed. His rev­e­la­tions about the con­flict with­in the coali­tion Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment were quite in­ter­est­ing and should be in­struc­tive to the regime of to­day. In­deed, the ex­pe­ri­ence of the NAR should guide the path of all po­lit­i­cal forces who would at­tempt to fash­ion a po­lit­i­cal union out of the his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­parate el­e­ments of the so­ci­ety.

The po­lit­i­cal re­count­ing by se­nior states­man Robin­son would be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in what we of­ten call a "nine-day won­der" so­ci­ety which pays lit­tle at­ten­tion be­yond the head­lines of the present. Yet again, and what­ev­er the crit­i­cisms he faced as prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent, his tes­ti­mo­ny brought in­to fo­cus the courage and pa­tri­o­tism demon­strat­ed by Mr Robin­son when he was un­der fire and brim­stone from the Mus­limeen gun­men. That is un­com­mon sac­ri­fice in the cause of oth­ers and he must be ad­mired and cher­ished. His courage and val­our were even more note­wor­thy when there were oth­er lead­ers of the time who did not leave their places of com­fort and on­ly sur­faced when it was safe to do so. It is easy for many to talk about sac­ri­fice and what they have done for their coun­try in peace­time; it is some­thing else to put your life on the line when your coun­try's democ­ra­cy is threat­ened.

In this re­spect, we do hope that both Mr Pan­day and Mr Man­ning make them­selves avail­able to pro­vide tes­ti­mo­ny at the en­quiry so that they help to clar­i­fy the his­tor­i­cal record and ex­plain some of the po­lit­i­cal oc­cur­rences of the last decade and a half. It is ex­pect­ed too that Mr Robin­son's state­ment, as he gets to fin­ish it, should trig­ger re­spons­es by those who may le­git­i­mate­ly feel they have their own sto­ry to tell as it may con­tra­dict what Mr Robin­son has and will say. In re­spect to coup leader Bakr, he should now come for­ward and make good on the many al­le­ga­tions he has made over many years about who were co-con­spir­a­tors in his plans and sub­stan­ti­ate them un­der di­rect ex­am­i­na­tion and cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.

De­tails al­so told to the com­mis­sion by then min­is­ter Joseph Toney and long-time ag­i­ta­tor for the com­mis­sion, Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, who was a spec­ta­tor in the cham­ber on the day, are al­so of sig­nif­i­cance and fill in many spaces that have been up for ques­tion. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the ma­jor pur­pose of the en­quiry must be to in­form the present of the past and to in­struct the coun­try's con­duct of its pol­i­tics in­to the fu­ture.