By Samuel D. Tweah, Jr. (former Finance Minister)
More than six years ago you assumed the presidency of our great patrimony, much to the anger and disappointment of your detractors. They had campaigned you were not qualified to be president and when you took it, they set out to demonize and destroy!
And boy did they succeed! The six years of your leadership saw the pinnacle of burgeoning and explosive social media propaganda. You were the first Liberian president to confront the maladies and doldrums of intense social media disinformation that even threatened to derail your presidency.
I will not this morning regale the public with the litany of those lies— the public itself is having its moment of reckoning and we should allow this purification to proceed unhindered — but will say through all these diabolical inventions your leadership was calm, reassuring and outstanding.
Where you might have been distracted, you led with a firm hand to drive through consequential social and political reforms on which posterity and future governments must depend, and which can never be undone!
When the political noise and clamor were too loud for all to see and appreciate the outcome of your work, you waded through the noise and kept on delivering. Today, when all is silent it your monstrous achievements that are making the loudest noise!
But why should we be surprised? In your 2018 inaugural, you had said you would not be defined by “the eloquence of my speech but by the eloquence of my actions. “
Mr. President, those eloquent actions, misjudged by the public in the 2023 elections due to propaganda, are now being fully understood. Great men of your stature may be vanquished in the distorting, mystifying and misunderstanding passions of the political moment, but they would soon be vindicated by the illuminating and verifying triumph of factual history!
Today that factual history of your governance shines.
You declared free public higher education, empowering more than 8,000 Liberians annually who had been denied tertiary education due to exorbitant costs. You brought down inflation from a high of 30% to a low of 7% and you did so in a record year and a half, making it one of the greatest inflation collapses in recorded history.
You were the first president to implement the decent wage law, which mandates that no Government worker should earn less than US$150 a month, assuring that more than 95% of government workers were paid above the minimum wage, leaving your successor to solve the technical issues affecting the remaining 5%.
You reformed the country’s inequitable wage structure and took doctors from a meager salary of US$700.00 to US$2000.00 a month. I remember your motivation vividly to this day. You wondered how medical students studying for years and for countless hours would earn below different categories of low-grade Government workers making more than $1000 a month under the broken wage system that you reformed.
You have secured major financings for most roads and electricity projects in the country. All financings for the Ganta Zwedru segment and from the opposite Fish-town Zwedru corridor in the Southeast were secured before you left office. You also have 10 years of financing with the World Bank on electricity.
After declaring FREE WASSE, which benefits more than 30,000 high school students annually, and Free public education, you commenced the construction of 25 high schools under a world bank financing. This is an indication of your long-term thinking on education. Today, these schools are coming online.
Mr. President, I can unstoppably go on and on with your successes which have gained a newfound fascination with the public, in testament to the wise old saying that “truth crushed to the ground shall rise again.
“But today is your birthday. Your story will not be told by us. The authors of your story will be the Liberians who felt and experienced what you did here, who but were shortchanged by propaganda!
We will let you be to enjoy your day chief and wish you Goo’s speed and blessings!
Happy birthday Mr. President!
