Dear President Boakai:
I present my compliments and best wishes for your good health and for your continued stewardship as the Captain of our Ship of state in these trying times. I had reckoned the fact that given the enormous challenges our great country has been facing with governance since its inception in 1847 and the mistaken belief that the recipe for economic stability, peace and security lies in the creation of future governments rather than the one in power, I retired myself into the saddle of silence by refusing the temptations to criticize your government as it’s being done by my fellow compatriots endlessly. At times I relish their concerns which in most instances are intended as
a wake up call but in others, I see pure politics that tend to obfuscate common sense so much that everything the government does is bad. Today, I have unshackled myself in turbulence from the realms of silence to tell you Mr. President that the Liberian people are suffering. ” They’re catching hell” but nobody wants to say it. Things are so hard that there’s a state of gloom everywhere in our communities. I humbly urge you, Excellency to look beyond the official news that is being provided you by your cabinet Ministers. Take a quiet trip around the city to see for yourself what I am talking about.
Mr. President nothing is working and from the look of things it seems that Liberia has been relegated to the abysmal paths of starvation, hunger and economic paralysis. Recently, I heard on the radio that the road between Vahum and Yandomuellahum in Kolahun District, Lofa County is no more and so the citizens are trading with neighboring Sierra Leone. A stone throw away from the Executive Mansion is West Point, a squalid community whose residents are living wretched lives but are not captured in the national budget and so too is Soniwein. My home town of Woloken, Tiempo Statutory District, River Gee County will never get a glimpse of what the national budget supposed to do for West Point or Clara Town that is closer to the epicenter of power.
Mr. President in all of this you’re unreachable, unaccessible and are gradually becoming the ” political property” of few of your lieutenants who are using their positions and proximity to power to mock their fellow compatriots while the jobs for which they were appointed are left undone.
Mr. President, do you remember the Alex Cummings case in which you made history of becoming the first former constitutional Vice President to serve as state witness? During one of our quiet rehearsal exercises, I told you that the role of the prosecution is not just to prosecute and win cases but to ensure that Justice is done. And that Justice requires giving every accused person his/her day in court and to be presumed innocent until the contrary is established. How that case ended is now history but what we did was to ensure that the defendant was innocent and the burden of proving his guilt rested on us, which we however failed to do in the events that followed.
Excellency, upon your assumption of power, you earnestly took on tenure positions and in the hay of the rancors that followed, you suspended my niece Elizabeth Dorkin and other well- meaning Liberians. Others challenged the decision but in the case of my niece I advised her that you invoked your “pleasure power” under Article 56 of the 1986 Constitution and therefore, she could only claim her contractual rights under Article 25 for the unexpired term of her tenure. Inasmuch as she was crying that she never had her ” day in court” I said frankly that your suspension order was sufficient notice but the truth is notice is simply a gist of due process.
Since I have been unwilling and unable to criticize your government because I believe there’s more time to make amends, we ended up at the Supreme Court not challenging the suspension order but to mandate your government to pay my niece for the unexpired term.
Excellency, it may interest you to know that even though we signed a stipulation agreement which was approved and later a letter was written by the Honorable Minister of Justice and Attorney General to support the payment stipulation agreement, nothing has happened. My niece has lost her job and her right to be paid in her own country and under a Liberian Government. What else is regional discrimination than this? This certainly is outside the ARREST AGENDA, and this short note is to challenge those who are using their proximity to you and their positions to hurt others.
Excellency, suspensions or dismissals are not the solutions to our problems of governance. I am certain that your appointees should should be the reflections of the reconciliation that your are preaching. If you do appoint the right people with the professional ingenuity to work for the country, Liberians will celebrate you. But if you appoint people who see themselves first and foremost as Lofians, uncle’s, aunties, nieces and the likes, your government will become a subject of scorn and rejection. I am afraid to say some of your officials are driving your government in the wrong direction!
Again, take for instance the drugs crisis. The LDEA is going after users and not importers and producers. You need an Independent Counsel with the requisite training and experience backed by logistical support to carry out search, seizure and Rescue mission and to order or conduct random drugs tests where applicable.
Building a nation with a history of lawlessness requires tough decisions irrespective of whose interest is at stake. Again and again, I am afraid to say your government has lost the war on drugs with the constant suspensions and dismissals at the LDEA officials before the actual war begins. There are no strategies and from the reports of constant suspensions and dismissals, it would seem we are using try and error methods in our drug war.
With all these troubling events, including the denial by your government to pay my niece, I am still unwilling and unable to criticize because I believe there’s still room for you to make amends. The time is now to carry out substitution in a number of agencies. After all as you said to me before that” public service” is not an entitlement and you repeated this statement recently at the investiture ceremony held at the Executive Mansion, I am pleading with you to rexamine the performance of your “Rescue Team” and do the needful. This is my plea.
Thanks
Cllr. Sayma Syrenius Cephus
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