Commission of enquiry into the 1990 attempted coup

DOOKERAN giving evidence


LIVE


http://1990coe.org/live-feed.html

Abdullah explains SOPO


“He stated that the weeks leading up to the 1990 insurrection saw SOPO building its social network base in challenging the Government on policies and programmes which they believed did not have the people's interest at heart.

The Summit of the Peoples Organisation (SOPO) was never a political party, but rather a broad-based umbrella group made up of labour unions, civil society organisations, other social groups and members of the Jamaat al Muslimeen.”

Sounds familiar???

In 1990 we were taught to hate NAR and Mr. Robinson, how they were wicked and evil for cutting salaries, retrenching workers and implementing VAT but no one told us it was because of the PNM mismanagement and corruption that left the treasury empty we had to endured those hardship.

3.17. The Commission finds that the date of 27 July was carefully chosen because of the following:

(i) Imam Abu Bakr was a member of SOPO. He knew that SOPO and the Joint Trade Union Movement had nominated 27 July as the date on which the people would have been asked to vote, in a “referendum” launched by those organisations, on the question whether they supported the policies of the Government or not;

(ii) Imam Abu Bakr and Bilaal were aware of the very great public interest in the football finals set for 27 July at the National Stadium. They calculated that there would have been a large crowd at the Stadium and large numbers of Police Officers would have been deployed there. The
403 attention of the Police would have been diverted to the Stadium.

(iii) Owing to widespread public discontent with the policies of the Government and the hostile industrial relations climate in the months immediately preceding the insurrection, Imam Abu Bakr and Bilaal assumed that they would have had popular support for their actions.