The broken compass
In the shadow of the 33rd anniversary of the July 1990 coup attempt, the anticipation of Emancipation celebrations on August 1, and the renewed hope of change at the upcoming local elections on August 14, something is broken. It’s our moral compass—some call it a conscience. Gone. Replaced by a new order of an anarchy of ANYTHING GOES.
After the attempted coup, the late journalist Raoul Pantin, in his yet unpublished memoir, describes the moment our collective moral compass was twisted beyond recognition. “On the afternoon of Friday, July 27, 1990, members of the Jamaat al Muslimeen (reportedly) made the rounds in panel truck vans and handed out guns, right, left and centre to young men all over the country, in anticipation of their joining in the effort to overthrow the government. “Little wonder that after 1990, a murder spree erupted in T&T, which, by 2008, resulted in an unprecedented 500-plus murders for the year. The New Year 2009 was hardly a few days old when this murderous trend continued with no end in sight, never mind that the authorities promised to “take back the country” from the now flourishing criminal gangs. The criminal free-for-all was also inspired by the fact that not only had the 1990 insurgents escaped punishment, Bakr became a multimillionaire when he successfully won a suit against the state for damage to his property at the Jamaat’s headquarters at No 1 Mucurapo Road.”
Our moral compass was distorted into a monstrous AN- YTHING GOES. Not only is a wrongdoer rewarded, but he or she is to be celebrated. Dennis McComie told me while laying a wreath on the cenotaph by the Red House on July 27 (a memorial that doesn’t yet have the names of the dead, that was deserted even on that anniversary) that “when you break the rules and get away with it”, you get a country that can “get rid of witnesses, burn down anything, take what you want. The stronger and richer you are, the more you can get away.” It explains why that event of 1990, an almost fatal lash on our democracy, has never been given its rightful place by successive administrations for 33 years. We have not adequately acknowledged the then prime minister ANR Robinson and one time President of T&T who, even after having a gun shoved in his mouth, after being shot in the leg, commanded the army to “attack with full force”.
Journalists (who make up the fourth estate that holds all democratic institutions to account) who were taken hostage, those who worked to bring the people’s news amidst the exchange of gunfire between the insurgents and the army remain unacknowledged. The state looked away, as party politics merged into a curdled governance. The coup attempt has been shamefully politicised and treated with indifference. McComie said, “We are bruised, traumatised and hurting because we have not come together to discuss this disaster, behind the matrix, still singing the ungrammatical ‘find’ in our national anthem instead of ‘finds’.”
Journalist Dominic Kallipersad, a hostage at TTT in 1990, is known to have refused the offer to be singled out for release in an exchange negotiated between the then-NAR government and the Jamaat. On the 30th anniversary, he said this to me in a rare interview on the subject: “Thirty years on and a Commission of Inquiry later, I’m angry that no government has ever commemorated the day and let 1990’s history be lost to generations. When I went to Japan, each town had its own museum, its history. “I want to weep when I see a culture that respects its history. I’m angry there hasn’t been official psychoanalysis of the 1990 coup attempt. We haven’t understood that people cannot stand up and rail against injustice by overthrowing a democracy (as Abu Bakr did), or exploiting misguided young men to carry guns.”
Kallipersad and other hostages remain “angry that we botched up the legal process against the insurrectionists. Angry that no government thought it their responsibility to take care of the hostages after the unprecedented trauma. Sorry, Raoul Pantin, who died traumatised. Sorry, Emmet Hennessy, who never recovered. “Jones P Madeira got an award decades later but saved this nation. He was the conduit between Abu Bakr and the army. None of the hostages has been compensated for anything. We have all been left rudderless.” The moral compass was broken.
So here we are, still a murderous 500 annually, at the cusp of a local election that brazenly includes a candidate (Jack Warner) who was reportedly implicated in numerous corruption scandals, banned for life from football-related activities by FIFA in 2015 and currently faces extradition to the US to face corruption charges. As we approach Emancipation Day, it feels right to answer Dennis McComie’s calling to fix that broken compass, combining the struggle and healing of Emancipation Day with the release of 1990 hostages. To recognise those who stood up for that moral compass that fateful week is to recognise love of country. Let the trauma of our nation’s past mean something. Let’s take back democracy, vote people in based on character rather than cash, put the coup attempt in our history books and monuments, and mend our compass, to have our collective conscience restored.
Ira Mathur is a Guardian columnist and the winner of the non-fiction OCM Bocas Prize for Literature 2023