Yvonne Ba­boolal

For­mer ra­dio broad­cast­er/jour­nal­ist Den­nis Mc­Comie said Oma Pan­day told him short­ly af­ter the bloody up­ris­ing on Ju­ly 27, 1990 her hus­band Bas­deo Pan­day said he was sleep­ing, "to wake him up when it is over."Tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the event at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Mc­Comie said he was pre­pared to face Mrs Pan­day and tell her that.Much con­fu­sion has sur­round­ed the in­fa­mous quote from the for­mer prime min­is­ter and op­po­si­tion leader.

The state­ment, de­scribed by com­mis­sion chair­man Sir David Sim­mons as an "anec­dote" and by Mc­Comie as a myth was de­nied as hav­ing ever been made.Oth­ers, like Pan­day's for­mer po­lit­i­cal col­league, Trevor Su­dama, told the com­mis­sion at a pre­vi­ous ses­sion when he was held hostage in the Red House dur­ing the up­ris­ing some­one tele­phoned Pan­day and got the same re­sponse.

Mc­Comie, the first to come out and say he was ac­tu­al­ly told it, said short­ly af­ter Imam Yasin Abu Bakr and mem­bers of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen staged the at­tempt­ed coup, he called Pan­day's home.Mc­Comie was a broad­cast­er with the State-owned Na­tion­al Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice at the time and called from the Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, sta­tion.

Mrs Pan­day an­swered the tele­phone.He said he asked for Pan­day, who then led a sig­nif­i­cant amount of Op­po­si­tion MPs in a break­away fac­tion of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment.He said Mrs Pan­day said "hold on" and then came back and told him Pan­day said he was sleep­ing and to wake him up when it was over.Fur­ther, Mc­Comie said, seek­ing to con­tact the coun­try's lead­ers, he called then op­po­si­tion leader Patrick Man­ning and got a sim­i­lar­ly in­dif­fer­ent re­sponse.

He said af­ter sev­er­al calls he got through to Man­ning who, in a very short con­ver­sa­tion, told him it was just a fam­i­ly squab­ble and would be over soon.Mc­Comie said a sim­i­lar fam­i­ly squab­ble state­ment was re­port­ed­ly made by Bakr and ob­vi­ous­ly Man­ning sup­port­ed it.The for­mer broad­cast­er said he was alarmed and as­tound­ed that T&T's po­lit­i­cal lead­ers did not seem to be par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in the fact that the Mus­limeen were stag­ing an in­sur­rec­tion.

"I put the phone down and I think I broke down a bit," he told the com­mis­sion.To com­pound the sit­u­a­tion, the army was an­gry with NBS for car­ry­ing re­ports on in­ter­views with Bakr, it was stat­ed.Brigadier Ralph Brown, a se­nior army of­fi­cer at the time, even threat­ened to take him out if he con­tin­ued, Mc­Comie said."I thought hav­ing a live link with Bakr might have helped re­solve the sit­u­a­tion but the army thought I was be­ing sub­ver­sive," he said.

Mc­Comie said he called Brown to ask for pro­tec­tion for NBS and Brown was so an­gry about the Bakr in­ter­views that he used ob­scen­i­ties."He said if I con­tin­ued he will take me out," Mc­Comie added.He said he con­tin­ued broad­cast­ing un­til the Tues­day night and on­ly stopped when then at­tor­ney gen­er­al An­tho­ny Smart told him to do so.Re­call­ing an in­ter­view with Bakr he said the Imam told him peo­ple were out on the streets sup­port­ing the up­ris­ing and were call­ing for him to be leader.

Mc­Comie said he told Bakr the peo­ple were on­ly loot­ing. He told the com­mis­sion it seemed peo­ple who ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed to sup­port the in­sur­rec­tion lat­er pulled out.Adding an in­trigu­ing and su­per­nat­ur­al el­e­ment to the fa­tal event, Mc­Comie said two months be­fore the at­tempt­ed coup a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist woman from To­ba­go wrote him a let­ter, proph­esy­ing God was not hap­py with the gov­ern­ment and it was go­ing to change un­der trag­ic cir­cum­stances.

She said peo­ple were go­ing to die, Mc­Comie re­called.He al­so said it was an an­gel who saved him from be­ing shot dur­ing the in­sur­rec­tion.He said he went to a press con­fer­ence at the Hol­i­day Inn (now Crowne Plaza) dur­ing the cri­sis with fel­low jour­nal­ist Cur­tis Rudd in his yel­low Volk­swa­gen.He said as he was com­ing out of the car in the carpark a voice (from a sol­dier) or­dered him not to move.He said: "My back was bent and I straight­ened up. Ap­par­ent­ly I was not sup­posed to do that.

"He un­did the safe­ty. I heard the click and he pulled the trig­ger. I saw the in­side of the bar­rel of the gun."I thought I was dead. Peo­ple told me af­ter­wards I wasn't. I lost my nerve com­plete­ly and nev­er got it back," Mc­Comie dis­closed.He added: "I think an an­gel put his fin­ger on the bar­rel. I think God just de­cid­ed it was not my time."Mc­Comie said the sol­dier him­self was just as as­ton­ished that the shot didn't go off.

He has writ­ten a book on the event, ti­tled 1990.For­mer jour­nal­ists Mar­lon Miller and Kirk Per­reira will tes­ti­fy to­day.