Mar­tin George

There seems to be very lit­tle pur­pose be­ing served by the "Don't blame the PNM for floods" mantra of Dr Row­ley when peo­ple's homes, pets, pos­ses­sions and life's sav­ings are be­ing washed away be­fore their very eyes. At such times the av­er­age house­hold­er is prob­a­bly more in­ter­est­ed in "Who's to help," rather than "Who's to Blame?" So in such a cir­cum­stance, Dr Row­ley would have been much more ef­fec­tive, gen­uine and po­tent if he him­self were al­so out there sur­vey­ing dam­age and see­ing how his par­ty could ren­der as­sis­tance rather than blam­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's tours as a pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty, maybe Dr Row­ley should have been do­ing his own tour­ing and meet­ing the peo­ple who were af­fect­ed by the rav­ages of the wa­ter and he may have had a dif­fer­ent view af­ter see­ing the dam­age up close and per­son­al as to whether the flood vic­tims felt this was a pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty or a pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

Af­ter the tremen­dous dam­age done by the floods, all these peo­ple are re­al­ly look­ing for is a flood of re­lief. More im­por­tant­ly, what Dr Row­ley needs to re­alise is that most of the flood af­fect­ed ar­eas rep­re­sent a de­mo­graph­ic that the PNM needs des­per­ate­ly to start seek­ing to woo back and win over. Maybe he should have re­al­ly been down there with rub­ber boots on, mix­ing with the peo­ple look­ing for some pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ties. The more time Dr Row­ley spends re-build­ing and the less time he spends try­ing to de­fend the past, the bet­ter it will be for him and his par­ty. Peo­ple are not stu­pid, at least not all peo­ple. The prophet Bob Mar­ley has said, "you can fool some peo­ple some time, but you can't fool all the peo­ple all the time."

These words have al­ready come to pass for the PNM Dr Row­ley, so let's fo­cus on the fu­ture. Let's see how you in­tend to ex­pand the par­ty's base with a view to not on­ly re­gain­ing your lost mem­ber­ship, but you need a plan to start at­tract­ing vot­ers and mem­bers in some of your non-tra­di­tion­al ar­eas. Hav­ing drunk a sec­ond time from the wine of as­ton­ish­ment, the chal­ice of pow­er, the hard­core UNC heart­land is not like­ly to eas­i­ly re­lin­quish its grasp on the cup han­dles and em­bark­ing on a cam­paign of de­fend­ing the in­de­fen­si­ble is hard­ly the way to go. Love him or loathe him, the modus operan­di of ac­tion Jack Warn­er of try­ing to get things done, res­onates a whole lot more with the gen­er­al pub­lic rather than a blame game of who's at fault.

The pub­lic is more in­ter­est­ed in know­ing, how do we solve the prob­lems? The PNM has a very vi­tal role to play in this re­gard as it is sup­posed to act as the van­guard and watch­dog of the pub­lic's in­ter­est in this re­gard. It is sup­posed to be vig­i­lant against po­ten­tial ex­cess­es and in oth­er cas­es com­pla­cen­cy on the part of the Gov­ern­ment. It is sup­posed to be ma­ture enough, to as­sist at times in help­ing to be part of the so­lu­tion, be­cause the Gov­ern­ment at times may not have all the an­swers, it may not have all the so­lu­tions and the pop­u­la­tion would ap­plaud and give due re­spect, cre­dence and cred­i­bil­i­ty to the PNM at the times when it steps up to the plate for the na­tion­al good and is able to put aside par­ti­san pol­i­tics for a greater na­tion­al cause.

Long gone are the days of peo­ple spout­ing dri­v­el like for­mer op­po­si­tion leader Mr Pan­day who said, and gen­uine­ly be­lieved, that the role of the op­po­si­tion, sim­pliciter, was to op­pose. The cit­i­zens of this coun­try have grown up a bit. They have be­come a lot more po­lit­i­cal­ly aware and savvy to the point where even their ap­proach to the new gov­ern­ment is one of guard­ed op­ti­mism. They are of course still caught up with the glow­ing em­bers of the eu­phor­ic back to back vic­to­ries, but the Prime Min­is­ter and her ad­vis­ers are well aware that this pop­u­la­tion is one that in due course will be call­ing up­on them to give an ac­count of their stew­ard­ship. Thus far, the Gov­ern­ment is cer­tain­ly treat­ing with, and giv­ing the pop­u­la­tion that re­spect.

This re­spect is a re­fresh­ing change from the con­tempt with which we, the peo­ple, were viewed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion and it is an ob­ject les­son for us as a na­tion, that we must nev­er be al­lowed to treat our own cit­i­zens with this kind of dis­dain and dis­re­gard. We must nev­er be­come too big, or too far re­moved from the prob­lems of the peo­ple so that we can no longer iden­ti­fy with their com­plaints and is­sues. We must nev­er again be­come so caught up with lofty ideas and pie in the sky tall build­ings, cran­ing their necks to­wards the heav­ens, that we for­get the lit­tle peo­ple gath­ered at the base of the tow­er and ig­nore them, hun­gry, with­out wa­ter, with­out prop­er roads, with­out prop­er trans­port sys­tems and with a dai­ly check­list of suf­fer­ings.

So you are right to put on your rub­ber boots Sis­ter Kam­la, walk through the floods and meet the peo­ple, talk to them and let's see ways we can bring re­lief to them, be­cause no mat­ter who's to blame, they have been sub­ject­ed to the floods, so now there's noth­ing wrong with try­ing to meet them and bring to them in any way pos­si­ble, a flood of re­lief.