By Sidiki Fofana / Truth in Ink
George P. Lobbo’s recent jab deserves a quick tarnishing response that will hopefully help change his mentality. His sarcasm about former CDC officials or party members now struggling to find work in the private sector, compared to Unity Party partisans who found jobs while CDC was in power, accidentally proves the very point he wants to deny.
What Mr. Lobbo confirms, though dressed as ridicule, is that the CDC government created an economy where even those opposed to it could survive. The CDC years with all its faults and flaws, still left a private sector able to employ Liberians regardless of party.
Businesses operated without the constant shadow of punishment for hiring the “wrong” people. That is why Unity Party supporters could find work even when their party was out of power.
The opposite is true today. Liberia’s private sector has been reduced to rubble under Unity Party leadership. Professionals with years of public service, strong academic backgrounds, and proven competence, many of them former CDC officials, now face closed doors not because they lack skill but because the jobs themselves have vanished. Policies that should encourage investment and enterprise have been replaced with fear and stagnation.
The market is weak; confidence is gone; private growth is flat. This is not only a CDC problem; the lack of jobs in the private sector doesn’t affect only CDC ‘s members, it affects every Liberian especially those not covered under the Unity Party banner.
Mr. Lobbo’s sarcasm tries to paint joblessness as a reflection of personal failure or lack of competence. It is not. It is a reflection of a failing economy.
When the government does not protect fair competition, when it threatens or quietly punishes those who hire across political lines, failed to expand the economy, undermine investor confidence; when contracts and access become party favors, the private sector dies. And when the private sector dies, ordinary people, not just former government officials, suffer.
This is bigger than attempting to claim a political victory even at default by a wrongful scorekeeping. It is about whether Liberia’s economy will be built for all its citizens or strangled to reward the few.
If such jabs of the Unity Party were to truly be taken as Lobb’s intent – lack of competence on the new job seekers, let him or the party points to the jobs the private sector under this administration has been able to create.
Instead of sending out these arrogant jabs, this government He must rebuild an open market, support investment, and letting companies hire on merit, not party allegiance.
In conclusion, Mr. Lobbo, my good friend, who was absent from the country for much of the years may need to ask those same Unity Party partisans he praises where many of their job recommendations truly came from.
He might be surprised how many were quietly assisted by CDC hands, extended even across political divides. I dare any Unity Party official today to show that same magnanimity without being dragged in the party’s internal chatrooms for “helping the enemy.”
Truth in Ink will not let alternative truth to replace facts. Liberia deserves leadership that builds opportunity, not walls.
