WHILE former prime minister Arthur NR Robinson and Members of Parliament (MPs) were being held hostage inside the Red House, there was a possibility that Cabinet members who were not held captive were plotting to take over the government.

Former head of the Public Service, Reginald Dumas, made this statement on the witness stand at the Commission of Enquiry into the attempted coup yesterday at the Caribbean Court of Justice building in Port of Spain.

Dumas was the prime minister's permanent secretary in 1990.

"There was a Cabinet minister who came into Camp Ogden on the 28th of July (1990), the Saturday, I won't mention his name, and said 'look the soldiers out there, what is the problem. Let's storm the Red House'," Dumas said yesterday.

Senior Counsel Avory Sinanan, lead counsel to the commission, asked Dumas if there was a "right wing counter coup in the making" while the 1990 insurrection was taking place.

"I will not dismiss that as a possibility because a few days after the event a minister phoned me at home, I was just preparing to leave to go to the office, and said that he and some others had been talking about the government and wanted me to stand by and take ministerial office," Dumas said.

"I said really. He said 'yes but don't do anything as yet I will get back on to you'. He never did and I never ever raised the matter but it did strike me at that point that something was going on and that there was this possibility as you mentioned that a group within the NAR (National Alliance for Reconstruction) was wishing to take over and possibly getting rid of Mr Robinson. I do not have any evidence whatsoever on this but I will not dismiss the possibility," Dumas said.

Dumas said on July 27, 1990 he was on the telephone with Cabinet secretary, Kathleen Boswell-Inniss, when he heard a loud explosion.

He only knew of the insurgence when his mother contacted him and told him to turn on the television, Dumas said.

He kept in telephone contact with Cabinet members who were not held captive inside the Red House.

On July 28, 1990 Dumas went to the army base at Camp Ogden.

Dumas was at the army base when the amnesty document was being drafted.

Dumas said he did not know who approved the amnesty document.

Sir David Simmons, the enquiry's chairman, said he hoped the four legal luminaries who "contributed to the final product" of the amnesty—Queen's Counsel Michael de la Bastide and Senior Counsel Martin Daly, Frank Solomon and Fyard Hosein—would appear before the enquiry.

"Let not your heart be troubled," Simmons told Dumas.

Dumas yesterday described the Robinson-led NAR administration as "technically competent and the least corrupt" government but said its downfall was the "disconnect" with the citizens.

Dumas said the NAR put aside "politicking" and made some of the hard decisions that needed to be made but their inability to communicate with the population led to their ultimate political demise.

"If the NAR did not take some of the decisions that they did I do not know where we would have been today," Dumas said.

Dumas said in the almost 50 years of this country's "political independence" the quality of governance has regressed.

Former Express journalist Raoul Pantin is scheduled to take the witness stand today.

Pantin was held hostage at the Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) on Maraval Road in Port of Spain and has written a book entitled Days of Wrath on his experience.