Letter To The Editor from Sherwood Lowe, PNCR

This Letter To The Editor was published in Today's Kaieteur News:

Dear Editor,

It is useful that Stella Ramsaroop, in Kaieteur News January 15, has given us a better insight into her feelings towards the PNCR rather than fall back on her loose one-phrase quip.

One senses (maybe mistakenly) from her article a view of the PNCR that says damned if you don't and “election-time ploy” if you do.

She correctly advises that the PNCR should be about serving the people. The PNCR is about serving the people. But Stella seems to have a restricted view of what serving means. She is right to say serving means offering direct help to the people in distress or in need.

The PNCR does this to the best of its limited resources. And we do this with compassion. One of the more active and long-standing departments of the PNCR is its human service department.

It is involved in programmes to support the needy, the old and the otherwise vulnerable. Its work is on the ground, in the communities, among families.

I want to also mention here our service to the people during the January flood of 2005. The PNCR, with its Leader, Robert Corbin, tirelessly setting the pace, did an enormous amount of work bringing material relief and emotional comfort to a devastated nation.

I can easily put quantities to this effort. Let me rely instead on the assessment of one of PNCR's most relentless and hostile critics, Frederick Kissoon.

Yes, Stella, your Sweet and Sensitive Freddie, in one of his articles last month, stated that the PNCR was first out of the blocks with flood relief for the people, that the PNCR was all over the country bringing relief to the people, and that the party's efforts got little media coverage.

Who can be more anti-PNCR that Freddie? And for him to say that!

But serving the people is a much, much broader mission. The fight to put an end to government corruption is about serving the people.

The fight to get government to adopt a proper crime-fighting strategy is about serving the people. The fight to expose narco-politics in the PPP is about serving the people. The fight for shared governance and participatory politics is for the people.

The fight to get all the constitutional reforms implemented is for the people. Our vision for a new Guyana is for the Guyanese people (we are pleased, by the way, that you read our weekly articles in Sunday's KN).

Has the PNCR extended itself to be an effective opposition? Yes. Could it have done more?

Yes. Is the PNCR or Robert Corbin the reason why this country is in dire straits (high crime, high joblessness, and high waters)? No! The fundamental problem in Guyana is a bad political system in the hands of a bad government.

The PNCR wants to change both.

Sherwood Lowe