Bravo Kamla, Bravo...

The news tonight that the Government of Kamla Persad Bissessar is taking steps to auction the property of extremist, pseudo-terrorist, radical islamic group - the Jamaat al Muslimeen is long overdue, and a much welcome sign that this Administration is capable of actual Leadership at a significantly higher level than the two prior Administrations of Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning.

Also announced tonight was the convening of a Commission of Enquiry into the events leading up to and including the week of and following Friday July 27th 1990, the date of the attempted Coup d'état by the same Jamaat al Muslimeen, led (then and now) by apparent megalomaniac and possible psychotic; Lennox Phillip aka Yasin Abu Bakr.

I for one, having attended the anniversaries of the Remembrance ceremony and having made this call year after year, would like to publicly applaud the Honorable Kamla Persad Bissessar for having the gumption and Prime Ministerial backbone neither of her predecessors apparently possessed by commissioning such an Enquiry.

The announcement that the advertisement for sale of the Jamaat properties will begin on July 27th of this year is sweetly ironic and sarcastic enough to encourage this writer to acknowledge the size of the moment, and to note the importance of that symbolism to simultaneously empower the people and reduce the cast of characters down from their deluded perch of messengers of God, to what they always were; petty thugs devoid of civility and respect for Law.

This decision marks the turning of a corner that began with the conspiracy by persons still unknown to attempt to hijack by force of arms the Seat of our Government and to put the democratically elected Government under the sword for their own nefarious purposes.
I have never credited the then Bakr with having enough acumen to formulate and equip such a bold plot, nor do I do so now, and the conspicuous absence of some key interests on that fateful afternoon gnaws at the logic and continues to beg numerous questions, not the least of them being who else was involved.

That Bakr is himself a paragon of lies and deceit does not promise credibility to any claims he may make, but one can only hope that, coming under the auspices of a Public Enquiry, others may be tempted to volunteer what they know and allow us all to have a better knowledge of the players involved in that cowardly and bullying act.

I implore the Government to not be swayed from this effort by appeals to cost or the passage of time.
The unmasking of those other conspirators is important to correctly recording our history and will play no small part as we as a nation chart our way forward.

If it were possible to convert die hards against you with one move, Mrs. Persad Bissessar, this move was it. You have rewritten your history and claimed your legacy by this course.

I would also like to publicly applaud The Attorney General, Mr. Anand Ramlogan for having the testicular fortitude and the courage of his convictions that no Attorney General from the last two administrations seemingly possessed.

There are many questions to be asked, answered, proven and prosecuted, and some of these that must be dealt with definitively are :-

Were there others as conspirators, facilitators and accomplices to Bakr and company?

If so, who are they, and what role did they play in facilitating armed insurrection against the state?

Did Basdeo Pandy have fore knowledge of the events of July 27th 1990?

Did Patrick Manning have fore knowledge of the events of July 27th 1990?

The fact that both eventual Prime Ministers Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning were absent from the Chamber on that fateful afternoon is a curious thing, and one to which the treasonous Bakr has alluded to over the years depending on whose good graces he was in at the time.

For six terrorizing days in 1990 this band of thugs armed to the teeth and willing to kill assaulted the peace and tranquility of a law abiding democracy, held hostage a sitting Prime Minister, Members of Parliament, journalists and lay people and threatened their lives and safety in pursuit of their own selfish aims under the guise of liberation.

Were it not for the men of our armed forces we may have lived a different history these last twenty years, and both Colonel Joe Theodore and Brigadier Ralph Brown are overdue the respect and accolades deserved by men who rescued the nation from these murderous thugs.

The enquiry should also pave the way for the naming and the honoring of all the national heroes including the hostages of that dark page in our history.

Unless we learn from the mistakes of the past we risk sabotaging our own collective future.

Bravo Madame Prime Minister, Bravo...