MAR 13

Opposition Member of Parliament for South St. George, Glynis Roberts has reacted to charges levelled against her by the Editor of the Grenadian Voice newspaper.

Writing in last week's issue of the paper, Editor Leslie Pierre in his "Personally Speaking" column, without calling names claimed that an Opposition M.P was using a diplomatic car for political work.

He said that the "diplomatic car" was used openly in the November 27 general election campaign and was still being used by the M.P who also continues "to remain in the quasi-diplomatic position".

Roberts who is associated with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is the Secretary of the local office of the European Commission.

Following is the full text of Roberts' reply to Pierre:

According to the penultimate paragraph of the column in the weekly Voice newspaper, personally speaking, dated March 6th 2004, disappointment hit me again in your judgement as a supposedly responsible journalist in ascertaining correct information and malicious information.

Why not ask seek to ascertain the correctness of your information before publishing for clarification if you are really interested in dealing with corruption?

What we can say is that for that particular Member of Parliament leading up to the November 2003 General Elections that individual was on leave initially from October 8th -October 21st 2003.

Elections was announced October 19th. Following that permission was granted for no-pay leave from October 30th -November 30th 2003. During the period under scrutiny the individual referred to, was ably assisted with transportation by friends and colleagues as we anticipated these sort of negative actions.

No time was any diplomatic car used during any political campaign. We will even venture further to say that even for the budget debate that individual was on leave and also used a rented car.

May we suggest in the name of good journalism, particularly for us who are senior citizens in the profession that we clarify our information and not try to discredit people unnecessarily. We know the price of progress is high and we are willing to withstand the challenges it may bring. We may make blunders along the way and if guilty we will admit when we are wrong, but this time the plead is "Not Guilty" of this charge.

So if the ultimate motive to get the individual to get out of the said office after 22 years of loyal service try something else. It is amazing that someone can be a good citizen in one breath and when they seem to differ politically the person suddenly becomes worthless.

Let us wise up and start reversing this negative trend and accept people for who they are and be good teachers to the young people who are coming up after us. Let us try to build bridges instead of burning them.

The election is gone. The result is that Member of Parliament for St. George South won with little or no money, which tells us money, doesn't talk all the time. It is a bitter pill but that is the reality. So let us move on.

Too much depressed youths, men and women to attend to. Too many drains to clean. Lots of programmes to implement to help alleviate poverty so let us move on and build this nation in love, peace and harmony.

Let's not just preach it but live it.