By D. WA HNE, JR.
I have had the distinguished privilege of interacting with President Joseph Nyumah Boakai then Vice President of the Republic of Liberia more than three separate times at his office on Capitol Hill on a person to person level.
The first meeting, I believe, was an investment discussion on toll roads construction with South African links, while the 2nd was the visitation of an American clergy man named Bishop William Atchison of Houston Texas along with the General Overseer of the Revival and Miracle Center Apostle Ostranuel B. Kamara during the heat of the Ebola. He braved the heat to come to pray for Liberia.
The third meeting was in the company of former Representative Richmond Anderson to discuss the outcome of our visit to Nigeria to bring to Liberia the World Mayors Conference and the Black Caucus of America in our bid to promote tourism in Liberia.
But the then information minister Hon. Lewis Brown to whom President Sirleaf directed the communication trivialize the matter. We had gone to the Vice President to share our predicament.
The fourth was an occasion when he delivered a speech at the P. A. Ribbs House in 2012 during Stakeholders meeting organized by the Constitution Review Committee. I encountered him through his speech.
These encounters brought out the best of Vice President Boakai and the intensity of his desire to serve his country with commitment, diligence, love for details, love for the rule of law, building unity in diversities and hoping that Liberians would learn to “cool their heads” in the midst of “conspiracy theories“ and public perceptions on national issues.
I was so impressed with lessons learned from those encounters and decided to build a unique future relationship with him.
At certain level, all seemed to work until the Unity Party, through President Sirleaf broke its campaign commitment to me and members of our Auxiliary after the 2011 elections, thus leading to disenchantment and later joining the efforts of the then Speaker Alex Tyler in establishing the LPDP where many disenchanted UP, NDPL and LAP members who collaborated with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s reelection found comfort and solace.
I relate these events to point to the fact that there are so many others like me who developed faith in the leadership abilities and experiences of President Joseph Nyumah Boakai and though we went on the battlefield of politics in different directions, our faith was beyond party affiliation and the fact that he is now President, those qualities which determined our faith in him still exists and put upon him the demand for justification.
Nevertheless, I think governance is laden with many complications and complex problems that take time to be evaluated, understood and provide solutions to.
However by this time, it is expected that the President has fully evaluated the problems, compressed them, understood them and found practical and workable solutions and have also done objective assessments of Liberians perceptions of his one year in office and their thoughts on trending national issues and how they must be addressed in ways that would build unity, peaceful co-existence and accelerate the drive to social, economic and political developments.
It is no doubt that the young people who are major proponents of the Boakai’s administration decision making and are surrounding him might see older heads as being relics of the past, old fashioned, and lacking idealistic thinking, and non-militant postures. But there are many advantages older heads have. First they were young before they got older.
Second, they have seen many administrations come and go and can easily identify what caused failures and crisis in the past and raise check points to avoid repeats. President Boakai must guide them.
They also must help the President build peaceful relationships with those they considered adversaries. They must learn to reduce the rate of opposition through rapprochement and open arms instead of resistance and tooth for a tooth.
What builds a nation cannot be found within a divide, nor is it found in strife in the midst of developmental ambitions and expectations. It can neither be found in inordinate ambitions that tear down the legal system, endanger the political atmosphere, disorganized existing functional systems, or placed impediments in the paths of justice, rule of law, constitutionalism and love for nation and one another.
Development cannot be achieved in the presence of chaos. What Liberia is today or will be tomorrow are found in our characters.
Our upbringing and family culture diversities that allow divisiveness, bitterness, reprisals, and selfishness must be streamed lined and readjusted to fit the national and international platforms as well as accepted standards of civilization.
A nation can easily be destroyed when leaders elevate friendship, partisanship, ethnocentrism, nepotism, aristocratism and vengeance above patriotism, nationalism and the values that make a nation great and outstanding and make development possible and easy.
The purposes of statehood and nationhood must be firmly articulated in our conducts, leadership culture and personal characters.
It is understood that in democracy there are democratic contestations for control of state power at the polls and in the process, there are divides based on platforms.
But those divides must operate within the spirit of democracy and after the contestation, the nation must be allowed to move on by putting behind us contestational differences that hurt our egos and ambitions in order to build the state for which the contestation took place. Therefore after elections, reconciliation is paramount.
The nation is now facing great challenges worsened by constitutional crisis as one of the critical aspects of the democratic process which decides who govern the state has failed to go away long after the elections to allow the other aspects of democracy to function.
Unless the Boakai’s Government begin to see Liberians as Liberians and not as political parties, regional political blocks or voters who voted against the UP, Liberia will be continuously plagued with animosities, setbacks in development and divers kinds of crisis.
In most instances when these crisis begin and increase, the leader is blamed and so is President Boakai. But most times, policy designers, advisors, and implementers are mostly responsible as well.
In Liberia’s current case, President Boakai and his team are to be held accountable as they are the team governing the state. He must quickly deliver himself by ensuring the victory of the rule of law and ending existing crisis.
When the rule of law regarding tenure positions was being set aside and justified by his legal advisor, I raised the red flag in this very paper.
When the Supreme Court gave its verdict on the LTA Commissioners prohibition against the state and the insistence of the government to proceed against the Supreme Court Ruling, many red flags were raised, but were also ignored.
Since then, there has been repeated calls for the Government to respect and promote the rule of law, accountability, reconciliation and national unity to move Liberia forward developmentally.
I think it is time for President Boakai to giantize himself as the touch bearer of Liberia’s democratic stability and growth and carve for the nation his name on national and international monuments as the icon of justice and the rule of law just as former President George Manneh Weah engraved for himself the reputation as a man of peace and development.
It is time for President Boakai to become the beacon light of justice and reconciliation. That’s who Liberians believed he was and that’s what he must become.
With the Supreme Court ruling for the House to return to status quo ante, the crisis may be prolonged as there may be movements back to minority block from the majority and also movements to the majority block from the minority block. The fluctuations may keep the House divided.
There are already vibrations in the Senate that might spark the need for regime change there too.
My plead to Mr. President is to pursue peace and reconciliation – not only in the House’s crisis, but amongst political parties and members whose bitterness towards each other resulting from the elections is the root of the crisis at the House of Representatives.
Mr. President, this is a passionate appeal from one who believes you can still make the difference despite a rough drive through the year.
