In 18 days, this coun­try will mark the 34th an­niver­sary of the Ju­ly 27, 1990, at­tempt­ed coup.

Six days of blood­shed and loot­ing in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal and the fear and un­cer­tain­ty that gripped the coun­try still have not fad­ed from the na­tion’s mem­o­ry. The pas­sage of time has not brought clo­sure for the peo­ple who lived through those days.It took years to re­build from the phys­i­cal dam­age, and some busi­ness­es nev­er re­cov­ered from the ma­jor loss­es in­curred dur­ing those tur­bu­lent days.

But the deep­est source of pain was the 24 lives lost, made worse by the fact that no one was ever con­vict­ed for killing those cit­i­zens. Leo des Vi­gnes, the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP, SRP Solomon McLeod, ASP Roger George, Es­tate Con­sta­ble Mal­colm Bas­an­ta, George Fran­cis, Arthur Guisep­pi, He­len Lavia, Lor­raine Ca­ballero, and Mervyn Teague were among the peo­ple killed in the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

An un­told num­ber of coup sur­vivors were deeply scarred by the ex­pe­ri­ence. Up to to­day, more than three decades af­ter that at­tempt by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen to over­throw the then Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment, it is not a light mat­ter to men­tion the word coup.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor in Ju­ly 1990, a po­si­tion that gave him a good van­tage point as those trau­mat­ic events un­fold­ed. He would know bet­ter than most that al­le­ga­tions about a coup plot—par­tic­u­lar­ly with the re­port­ed in­volve­ment of a re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion—sound eeri­ly like his­to­ry re­peat­ing for a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion still trou­bled by the un­rest of Ju­ly 1990.

The de­tails in Dr Row­ley’s state­ment to Par­lia­ment last Wednes­day about an al­leged plot to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment by op­er­a­tives at the na­tion’s high­est se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence agency, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), were dif­fi­cult to di­gest—and that’s putting it mild­ly.

How­ev­er, this coun­try is en­ti­tled to know what tran­spired at the SSA, and there is a weight of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on Dr Row­ley, as the head of this coun­try’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), to en­sure that this mat­ter is han­dled with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.

The SSA, a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of T&T’s in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing in­fra­struc­ture, has been se­vere­ly com­pro­mised since March, when the Prime Min­is­ter was pre­sent­ed with cer­tain in­for­ma­tion by the Spe­cial Branch. The re­call of re­tired Brig Gen An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer from a diplo­mat­ic post­ing in the Unit­ed States to take up the po­si­tion of act­ing di­rec­tor of the SSA and spear­head the probe are just a few pieces of a com­plex puz­zle that have on­ly been re­vealed in part to the pub­lic.

That is why Dr Row­ley’s rev­e­la­tions about the in­tel­li­gence agency be­ing un­der the in­flu­ence of a re­li­gious cult of high­ly-trained, well-armed mil­i­tary op­er­a­tors who want to over­throw his Gov­ern­ment have been met with de­nials from in­di­vid­u­als im­pli­cat­ed in the al­leged plot and scep­ti­cism from oth­ers.

So far, no ma­jor charges have been laid in con­nec­tion with the al­leged trea­so­nous plot, which is con­cern­ing giv­en the al­le­ga­tions of mur­der and in­fil­tra­tion of the SSA by cult mem­bers.

Dr Row­ley’s state­ment on the SSA au­dit has led to more ques­tions than an­swers and cre­at­ed a deep sense of un­ease in the pop­u­la­tion. With all the still-un­re­solved is­sues sur­round­ing Ju­ly 1990, this time around, as more coup al­le­ga­tions arise, this na­tion is en­ti­tled to noth­ing less than the full truth. Over to you, Dr Row­ley.