Gail Alexan­der

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day is will­ing to ap­pear be­fore the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup as long as he gets the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cross-ex­am­ine peo­ple who have made al­le­ga­tions about him. Pan­day con­firmed his po­si­tion yes­ter­day. His name was drawn in­to the is­sue ear­ly in the hear­ings when for­mer prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son made var­i­ous state­ments about him. Yes­ter­day, Pan­day said the com­mis­sion in­to the events of 1990 had writ­ten him about ap­pear­ing be­fore the team if he want­ed to.

He said: "First I've al­ready said the ef­fort is a colos­sal waste of mon­ey so on the face of that, I would hard­ly rush to tes­ti­fy. it would be a con­tra­dic­tion. "But I did let them know that if sum­moned I'm pre­pared to give ev­i­dence and I would ask them to make avail­able to me for cross ex­am­i­na­tion, per­sons who have made al­le­ga­tions against me im­plied­ly or ex­press­ly.

"I would al­so sug­gest in this hear­ing that peo­ple be sub­ject­ed to a poly­graph test to en­sure they are speak­ing the truth in this since a lot of peo­ple are giv­ing per­son­al opin­ion, speak­ing from sen­ti­ment or emo­tion­al­ism with­out ba­sis of fact." Pan­day added: "It re­minds me very much of the Scott Drug Re­port pro­ceed­ings. I hope this com­mis­sion would not be guilty of the same thing as that was." For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, with whom the com­mis­sion al­so com­mu­ni­cat­ed be­fore pro­ceed­ings be­gan, has in­di­cat­ed he would co-op­er­ate, it was con­firmed in the T&T Guardian three weeks ago. (GA)