‘Liberians easily forget’ and ‘accept mediocrity’ are accusations levied against us. It always seems like we fail to learn from history. J. Fonati Koffa has resigned; Koon is legitimately elected, and all is forgotten out of a sudden reality. This is Liberia. Things are easily forgotten and learning from the terrible mistakes of the past remains unimportant. But, we imagine that the country will, overnight, become a glorious and prosperous land. What a myth!
The level of lawlessness, violence and waste of our public resources, especially finances, over the last few months as the President and his henchmen sought to realign our legislative leadership in favour of a bunch of yes sir-men and sycophants, and set the historic precedence of disregard for our constitution, the plight of Liberians and the undermining of the legitimacy of the Supreme Court of Liberia are all expected to be forgotten and we can pretend that all is well.
But all is not well. What we have are officials of government dismissing the authority of the Supreme Court and the President, who took the oath to protect the constitution, making troubling statements then like ‘working with quorum’. What we now have is a major problem in our democracy.
We have the problem of an ineffective first branch, filled with a bunch of dishonest, desperate souls who care more about enriching themselves to the detriment of the Liberian people.
The level of violence that we are witnessing in our country is not new. As students of Liberian history, we know what the consequences of violence against the Liberian people have resulted to.
A breakdown in law and order and chaos. Many in Liberia believe that violence is when someone is beaten up or when there are gunshots flying over heads. But violence is not merely beatings, shootings, chopping of limps or torturing.
What is going on in Liberia is violence against the citizens by a lawless group of individuals who believe that they can get away with it because whenever there is a call for ordinary Liberians to protest, some fear monger and say, ‘oh, it could lead to violence’. Yet, when a commissioner of the Liberia Telecommunication Authority (LTA) allegedly takes home US$3,500 for his/her generator, when others are sleeping in fear and darkness, that is not violence.
When over 8,000 children die each year before their first birthday whilst members of the House of Representatives collect over US$10,000 in salary and petrol allowances, that is not violence. When thousands of our young girls are being used as prostitutes and sex slaves whilst President Boakai and his supporters live in luxuries, that is not violence against those young girls and women.
I know that I have painted a daunting picture of the situation in our country so far. But it had to be done to draw attention to the problems. Yet, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said, ‘our problems are man-made, therefore, they can be solved by man’. Yet, what we see in Liberia is not an effort to solve the problem but make it worse.
The Rescue Mission which was projected to rescue Liberians from abject poverty and build the country in order to have it stand on par with its counterparts among comity of nations has become a rescue mission for the political elites who were broke whilst out of government jobs. Those things criticized yesterday that
When President Boakai had the chance in the spirit of unification day to bring people together to discuss an equitable way forward, he chose division by sending politically driven text messages to some leaders in the society as a token and not a serious attempt to unify the country.
Many Liberians have forgotten that already. For some, the President did something magnanimous. But the truth remains that unification is never achieved through political rhetoric. ‘Former President George was not fit to lead the country,’ some believe.
‘Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf squandered opportunities she had to have rebuilt Liberia and leave it at a better position,’ another group thinks. Now, Boakai who condemned his two predecessors, especially Sirleaf who was his boss when he served as Vice President, is yet to change the governance dynamic, even though it is almost two years into his Presidency.
As Robert Francis Kennedy once said and we are witnessing in Liberia, ‘the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility towards the sufferings of our fellow men, mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings’.
Yet, as Robert Francis Kennedy also said, ‘no one committed to participating in public life can sit on the sidelines when so much is at stake’. Furthermore, as Alhaji G.V. Kromah, a former professor at the University of Liberia who also became a warlord in the 1990s civil unrest once said ‘Liberia is a bus.
The President, Joseph Nyumah Boakai is now the driver. We as Liberians are the passengers. We cannot sit in the bus and allow the president to drive at high-speed around a corner on a cliff, knowing that we will all crash and die’.
Liberians must speak out to prevent our country from declining further. To clarify, using another quote by Robert Kennedy, I say these things ‘not to oppose any man but merely to propose new policies that strangulate the survival and well-being of our people.
’The Legislature is the first and should be the most powerful branch of government as it is the branch with the power of appropriation, setting of laws and oversight over the other two branches. It is also the branch, whose Lower House is the direct representative of the Liberian people.
However, with legislators relinquishing their powers and duties to the Liberian people in the interest of enriching themselves through the violent detriment against the Liberian people, all Liberians, especially the better of us must now coalesce to develop new policies to hold power accountable in Liberia and stop the violence against our people before it disintegrate into chaos as we saw in the 80s and 90s.
I believe that almost all of Liberia’s problems can be traced back to the Legislature, a very insensitive branch of Government that is yet to do much to change the narratives in public state governance.
Hence, fixing it to function for the people is the place to start. One of my favourite movies is Rush Hour 2. I want to use the scene on the plane back to Los Angeles from Hong Kong when detective James Carter told Inspector Lee that the primary rule for solving any crime was to ‘follow the rich white man’, in other words, follow the money.
I believe that for us to realign the first branch of government to function in the interest of the Liberian people and democracy, we must take money out of the legislature. I am not calling for the removal of their appropriation powers. I am calling for new thinking on how we can change their motivations. The high levels of salaries and allowances that are paid to legislators are attracting the worse and most corrupt of Liberia into the legislature.
By making sure the Legislature becomes less financially attractive, I believe that most people who would want to become legislators would go in there for the duty and not the thousands of dollars in salaries and allowances. So, for Liberia to progressively move forward, we need to change the motivations of our legislators from entering the legislature to enrich themselves to the detriment of the Liberian people-ensuring they enter with a clear sense of duty.
We do this by removing the high salaries and perks to make becoming a legislator less financially attractive. You might have noticed that this opinion is not filled with details on my proposal. It was deliberately written to be provocative and get you thinking. The detailed proposal will come soon in another opinion.
About the author: Dr. Fidel C. T. Budy is a Liberian scholar based in Great Britain. Budy is a researcher, compliance officer, and activist with expertise in land rights, land grabbing, and natural resource governance. He is the Compliance Officer for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). He also has experience in project management, qualitative research, and team working.
