Yvonne Ba­boolal

In the build-up to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, the ex­ec­u­tive of the for­mer state-owned Trinidad & To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) caused anger among the pop­u­la­tion by its di­rec­tive that all sto­ries in­volv­ing then prime min­is­ter, Arthur NR Robin­son, be giv­en promi­nence.Jones P Madeira, TTT's head of news at the time, who said molo­tov cock­tails were thrown close to his of­fice dur­ing the 1990 in­sur­rec­tion by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­gents, made the dis­clo­sure as he gave ev­i­dence in the third ses­sion of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the coup, at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Madeira said "jour­nal­is­tic in­tegri­ty" made him fight against State pro­pa­gan­da at TTT, dur­ing the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion regime.He said the sta­tion would be bom­bard­ed with neg­a­tive calls when­ev­er they ran a sto­ry with Robin­son.He said he fought the di­rec­tive from com­pa­ny's ex­ec­u­tive that any event in­volv­ing Robin­son and the then pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic-Noor Has­sanali-was to be a main sto­ry.Madeira fur­ther dis­closed: "When Raoul Pan­tin de­liv­ered a par­lia­men­tary re­port every Fri­day af­ter­noon and ex­cerpts were pulled out from the de­bate, the pub­lic re­ac­tion was bad."He said he be­lieved this was the rea­son molo­tov cock­tails were thrown at the sta­tion dur­ing the coup."I had the im­pres­sion that it was part of the dis­qui­et that per­vad­ed the so­ci­ety."He said those who threw the molo­tov cock­tails were al­so not pleased, per­haps, with TTT's cov­er­age of demon­stra­tions by the Ja­maat, nurs­es and oth­er pub­lic ser­vants at the time.

He said the at­tack on TTT was a demon­stra­tion of dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Gov­ern­ment, which start­ed with con­fu­sion over the dis­man­tling of the NAR.He re­called get­ting a let­ter in the news­room con­tain­ing a threat to blow up then na­tion­al air­line, British West In­di­an Air­ways.Asked if peo­ple were not sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment's an­ti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign, he said he be­lieved peo­ple were more dis­en­chant­ed by the eco­nom­ic down­fall.He said oil prices were falling but the Gov­ern­ment was fo­cus­ing on cor­rup­tion in the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Asked why the pop­u­la­tion did not sup­port the erec­tion of a stat­ue of Gene Miles, who was vic­timised for her stand against cor­rup­tion, Madeira said the Gov­ern­ment's cor­rup­tion de­bate wasn't yield­ing any­thing and they didn't see a stat­ue as sig­nif­i­cant.Madeira re­called that a Mus­limeen mem­ber whom he iden­ti­fied as "Mr Khan" came to TTT and sold wares for about two years be­fore the coup.He said he saw him lat­er as one of the in­sur­rec­tion­ists and Khan told him, "I'm sor­ry."Madeira said de­spite gen­er­al dis­qui­et among the pop­u­la­tion, Ja­maat leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, could not amass na­tion­al sup­port for the up­ris­ing.

"When Bakr dis­cov­ered that the sta­tion's trans­mis­sion was cut he was very an­gry and said: 'Mr Madeira, by now I should be on peo­ple's shoul­ders.'"He felt once the event was staged, the pop­u­la­tion would sup­port him."That nev­er hap­pened and I could have told him it nev­er would."Madeira said the Ja­maat mem­bers want­ed to present them­selves as cham­pi­ons of the poor and as crime­fight­ers.He said they came once to TTT with a bag of co­caine and want­ed to foist a sto­ry and when the sta­tion re­ject­ed it they emp­tied it in the bath­room.Madeira con­tin­ues to give ev­i­dence to­day.