With Bai M. Gbala, Sr.
Monrovia , Liberia - November 29, 2011
According to the Paper, Who, How, When, Why: The Establishment of Liberia , US President Ulysses S. Grant, in 1873, demanded payment of an over-due and payable loan of $46.807.81 from the Republic of Liberia . The Liberian President, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, pleaded for debt forgiveness because the Republic did not have the funds with which to make the payment. Thereupon, the-then US Ambassador accredited to Liberia , His Excellency J. Milton Turner, declared that “ Liberia was infected with the economic disease of ‘. . . continual consumption without production . . .”
Liberian Foreign Debt
The Paper reported that “when . . . Tubman took over the presidency of Liberia in 1944, the national debt was $1.2 million. In 1962, it rose to $108 million. By 1971 (at the time of President Tubman’s death at a London Clinic) when (Vice) President Tolbert took over, Liberia ’s national debt was $317 million, and debt financing consumed 23% of domestic revenue”. At the time “when President Tolbert was removed in 1980, Liberia ’s national debt was $515.9 million, and the Doe Administration pumped it up to $1.1 billion”. This was 26 years after Liberia became a sovereign, independent state. In today’s language, “continual consumption” is “conspicuous consumption” without production for export, in the case of our country.
Continuous/conspicuous consumption of Imports without Production for Export
After 164 years of national independence and sovereignty, we remain a nation of profound, unquenchable thirst of and for continuous/conspicuous consumption of goods and services that we do not produce nor provide. For example, visit our line ministries and agencies of government, including the Port of Monrovia, LPRC, LPMC, National Oil Company, Central Bank of Liberia, National Investment Commission, National Maritime Authority, National Security Agency, National Police, National Elections Commission, Bureau of Immigration & Naturalization, etc., etc. and you will find, lined up, hundreds of thousands of automobiles – all makes, flashy, top-of-the-line, expensive, luxury models – sold to us at exceedingly, inflated prices; but we have no national, all-weather, paved roads or highways for these vehicles to ply. Therefore, the vehicles’ useful, life-expectancies are limited to new purchases, new costs – new imports!! Moreover, the City of Monrovia , the seat of our Government, is a very small peninsula with more, exponentially-increasing, automobile and human traffic than it can not hold safely and reasonably.
Then there are some 100-, 200-, 300- and 400-KVA, electric generators – gasoline or diesel – that supply electricity for 10-12-24 hours per day to these agencies. Furthermore, foreign-owned and operated hotels, restaurants, business-houses, residences, diplomatic missions and those of us (Liberians who can afford it) buy and install electric generators to provide private, electric power, with overhead, water tanks that pump water by electric power. Meanwhile, a majority of city dwellers, nation-wide, live in darkness or by kerosene or candle light (a potential and often fire hazard) without pipe-borne, safe, drinking water. Some residents who, in relative terms, can afford the expense, buy electric power from foreigners and enterprising, Liberian entrepreneurs who, very often, lack the capital, management experience and relevant, professional competence for efficiency and safety. Is it not, therefore, effective and efficient – the optimal use of scarce resources at the least, possible cost – to combine all of the mosaic of disjointed, inefficient, and costly service into a single, manageable, cost-effective scheme for service to the general public? Disappointingly, our Mount Coffee Hydro, extensively looted of its equipment, is sinking or has sunk into the abyss of the great beyond.
For a face-to-face confrontation with our unquenchable thirst of continuous, conspicuous consumption of imports, just take a tour of the streets of central Monrovia, Red Light market in Painesville, Vai Town, Duala, Logan Town, Somalia Drive, VOA Junction in Brewerville, the major, Import/Export Trading Houses in metropolitan Monrovia, and in our County Capitals, nationwide, to note that we buy everything imported, from building materials, furniture, household appliances, etc. and clothes – women’s body-hugging, stressed jeans, panties, bras, hairpieces, etc. to men’s jeans, t-shirts, underpants, shirts, western suits, shoes, etc.
You will also note that young peddlers – men, boys, women and girls – dart aggressively between and among heavy, automobile and human traffic, selling chewing gum, biscuits, car seats, bras, plastic slippers and perfumes, commodities that we do not make.
Price Inflation & the high Cost of Living
This condition – the demand for more and more imports – explains the phenomenal rise of general price inflation, including the cost of imports, denominated in foreign currencies – US dollars, British pounds, EU euros, German marks, French francs, etc. To satisfy this unquenchable thirst for imported goods and services, we must, and do, demand more and more of these foreign currencies. Now, in economic reality, the more and more a commodity is demanded by consumers, the more and more the price of that commodity rises. The foreign exchange rate being the price paid in one’s local currency for the given, foreign currency, therefore, we have to, and must, dish out more and more Liberian dollars for one unit of foreign currency, US dollars in our case, for example.
“Thus”, we observed elsewhere (Now that We printed new Liberian Banknotes, June 2001) that “we have seen and experienced that from a three-Liberian-dollar to one-US-dollar, exchange rate in 1989, the exchange rate now (in 2001) stands at 64:1, in favor of the US dollar and rising” and has, in fact, risen to the present (2011) 72+:1, in favor of the US dollar. “In other words”, we noted further, that “the Liberian consumer now (2001) pays a great deal more than twenty times for the same quantity and quality of goods and services bought in 1989; this prevailing condition (2001) raised the cost of living while, simultaneously, holding income constant at the depreciating or depreciated, Liberian dollar value; thereby, depreciating, also, or drastically reducing consumer buying power; a triple, economic tragedy!!!”.
Liberian Food Security
With respect to food, we buy imported rice, our staple, cooking oil, orange/pineapple/tomato/grapefruit juices and the list goes on and on, although we have more land - with lush greenery, rain, water and daily sunlight for energy – than people.
We can grow, produce/process for export such tropical food products as rice, corn, cassava, potatoes, plantain, banana, eddoes, palm oil, corn oil, processed palm butter, bitter balls, egg plant, pawpaw, cabbage cucumber, onions, peanuts/peanut butter, leaf lettuce, processed cassava leaves, potato leaves, collard greens, palava sauce, fish and fish farming, raise goats, cows, cocoa, coffee, poultry/poultry products, etc., etc.
Developing, Encouraging Liberian Business & Entrepreneurs
If 1.7 million, Liberian customers (according to Lone Star Communications, the cell phone people), more than half of the nation’s population of some 3+ million, can manipulate, successfully, and navigate the cell phone device which functions much like the computer, it is reasonable to believe and conclude that the interested, motivated and determined, average Liberian businessperson has the natural, intellectual competence and capability to organize and operate a business successfully. All that he/she would need is understanding with support and economic/management advice, based on our local, peculiar, socio-cultural conditions, in terms of capital formation, loan packaging and collateralization.
Our Traditional, Liberian Attire
Reference to our Liberian, traditional attire, it can be said that it was after the 1980 Event and, particularly, during our Peace Process travels to many African, capital cities, that Liberian leaders and trends-setters became conscious of the dignity of our African or Liberian, traditional attire – the elegant, colorful, flowing gowns with various, African, artistic designs for men, as opposed to western, Brooks Brothers or Botany 500 suits; and the classic, also elegant, Lappa Suits of similar color and designs, for women as opposed to western, skin-tight, body-hugging dresses with see-through, push-up bras. Now, there is a young, Liberian businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, who markets Liberian, traditional clothing and what he promotes as “made in Liberia.”
Finally and more importantly, the Liberian President, Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has added a touch of class, dignity and symbol of approval to the classic, Liberian Lappa Suit, that she had worn and continues to wear proudly at national/international gatherings.
Bai M. Gbala, Sr.
E-Mails: bai_gbala@yahoo.com/baimaysongbala@yahoo.com
Tel. (+231-0880)954-428/(+231-0880)970-309
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Is This The Revolution?
Open Letter to Sirleaf, Sawyer, Fahnbulleh and Tipoteh
By Jerry Wehtee-Maotee Wion
Washington, DC, Nov. 23, 2011: The great Nelson Mandela said it best: “there is no easy walk to freedom.” I first want to ask some of Liberia's self-anointed progressives---Dr. Amos Sawyer, Dr. Henry Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr., and Dr. Togba Nah Tipoteh--- who have now comfortably taken their seats at the master's table, if this is the REVOLUTION that you so eloquently advocated, articulated and engineered in the 1970s that has since put Liberia on a deadly path for four decades? In her "victory" speech on Nov. 12, 2011 following Bloody Monday (Nov. 7, 2011), President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf saw a falsely divided Liberia . "Political leaders have a special and a greater responsibility to bring our people together, to cement the FALSE DIVIDES," she said of a "victory" that is forever stained with the blood of the masses for who you preached, and now has led to the deaths of 250,000 Liberians and still climbing since 1979. I pray that you all sleep well every night when you go to bed.
I have said in my news commentaries that Liberia is Africa 's first failed experiment at setting up a true democratic form of government on the continent. We got it wrong in 1847 and still can't seem to get it right after 164 years of trying. Had Liberia lived up to its promise then, perhaps Africa 's long years of colonial subjugation may have been abbreviated. Look at where the country is today. How many more of our people must die before we get it (democracy) right? Do you take any credit for a nation that is adrift? Or, is this the REVOLUTION?
Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. said "there comes a time in life when one must take a stand that is neither safe, nor popular, nor politics, but you take it because it is right, and that it is a cause worth dying for if needs be. And that if a man has not discovered something worth dying for then he is not fit to live. And that a man cannot ride on your back unless it is bent." For too long the masses of the Liberian poor have allowed others to ride on our backs. It is time that we straighten our backs up, and we thought you would lead us to the promised land of a utopian democratic Liberia . But I guess this is the REVOLUTION.
True democracy can become infectious and contagious and can spread to its immediate neighbors. Just look at North America ( United States and Canada ), Western Europe and the Asia Pacific nations. Practice the opposite and your people suffer like in most of Africa . You be the judge as to the type of democracy we have in Liberia that after 164 years of "independence" our people don't have electricity, safe drinking water, let alone a decent healthcare system.
You were the proponent of the popular political refrain "monkey works, bamboo draws." Flip the coin, and it is now today, "monkey is still working, let bamboo wait small." Please tell the Liberian people who is the monkey and who is the bamboo, since you've now crossed carpet and are receiving your decorations in the Humane Order of African Redemption and of the Knighthood of Pioneers. I guess the REVOLUTION has arrived for the masses.
Since it seems Sirleaf has put on political blinders, and you have failed to point out to her the many TRUE DIVIDES in our country, I have painstaking jotted down a few and ask you, where are the FALSE DIVIDES? Yes, where are the FALSE DIVIDES in Liberia :
--when Sirleaf and her cronies who grew up on the corrupt diet of the True Whig Party (TWP), became the cheerleaders and sang its mantra/anthem of “so say one, so say all,” then abandoned the TWP which is still a registered party, not for any philosophical or ideological convictions but so that you don’t go down with a sinking ship, and you hijacked instead political parties started by nationalist progressives who were marginalized by the TWP (Liberia Action Party of Jackson F. Doe and now the Unity Party of Henry Boima Fahnbulleh, Sr.);
--when you failed to push your ruling Unity Party members in the Legislature to include, while crafting the just defeated National Referendum, the rights of all Liberian citizens regardless of where they live in the world, and including the 1,000,000-plus driven out of the country as a result of the 14-year war you masterminded, the right to vote in presidential election;
Yes, where are the FALSE DIVIDES in Liberia:
--when US$7 million was allocated in the national budget for the repairs/renovation of the office and official residence of the President of Liberia (The Executive Mansion) that was gutted by fire on your watch six years ago on July 26, 2006, but is yet to be repaired and the money vanished in thin air and there is no accountability;
--when your “war on corruption” and “corruption is enemy number one” are now meaningless and empty lip-service slogans while funds meant to lift our people from poverty continue to enrich a few as the masses wallow in abject poverty;
Yes, Liberians want to know if these glaring and unscrupulous practices of your administration are not TRUE DIVIDES:
--when morality, fairness, transparency and accountability demand that you provide documented evidence of how taxpayers’ money (US$10,000.00 per foreign trip as per diem, and US$2 million allocated to your office annually for “presidential office use”) is spent, and if it is not all spent that the remainder goes back into the national treasury. Can you provide documented evidence?
--when without legislative oversight in the wake of the US$1,000,000.00 illegal money transfer from the Central Bank of Liberia to an account that matches your private account at Ecobank, and where the Governor of the Central Bank disclosed you had, without the knowledge of the Legislature, already transferred over US$10,000,000.00, for as you put it “my development agenda” using the underground railroad triangle of your office, that of the Deputy Minister of Finance for Revenue and the former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Liberia who has since been promoted to the position of Liberian Ambassador to Germany;
Am I missing something and the President sees FALSE DIVIDES:
--when at the peak performance of the Liberian economy (1979-1980) the president’s official salary was US$36,000 annually and the lowest paid government worker earned US$250.00 a month. But when in your first national budget after you inherited a failed economy and a depleted treasury, you ironically doubled your presidential salary from US$36,000.00 to US$72,000.00, but lowered the salary of the lowest paid government worker from US$250.00 a month to the slave wage of US30.00, and six years later the lowest paid civil servant earns less than $US100.00 a month; I humbly ask you Madame President: are these FALSE DIVIDES?:
--when government police brutalize students repeatedly, and gunned down and killed opposition protesters;
--when you jailed 84 opposition protesters on the eve of elections;
--when you closed down media outlets to silence opposition dissent in the new "democratic" Liberia ;
--when the police chief termed as "rumors" the killings of protesters;
--when the police chief blamed the killings on UN Peacekeepers;
--when you the President "regrettably extend my deepest condolence and offer government's assistance" for those killed;
--when the US government expressed condolence to the families of those killed and demand an independent investigation into Bloody Monday?
The Liberian people want to know and deserve to know about what you see as FALSE DIVIDES:
--when one is the architect who conceived, planned and financed Liberia's 14-year bloody holocaust that killed 250,000 Liberians (Tom Woewiyu’s Open Letter);
--when you publicly admitted in sworn testimony before Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) about raising US$10,000 for Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front rebel group;
--when you refused to implement the TRC Report which is the law to punish those who brought war to Liberia in which 250,000 people were killed;
Are these still FALSE DIVIDES:
--when you "won" in a landslide elections boycotted by the opposition in which protesters were killed;
--when the US, Jimmy Carter Center, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch all condemned "police brutality" on Bloody Monday; and,
--when the US State Dept. Annual Human Rights Report since you were elected president in 2005, accuses your government of widespread corruption and a corrupt judiciary where judges take bribes to rule in cases;
I humbly ask: are these FALSE DIVIDES in Liberia ?
--when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia, who is supposed to know better about the rule of law in a democracy, violated the law with impunity by ordering his Court officers into a private business, arrested and handcuffed the manager of a private airlines on the flimsy charge that the foreign businessman owed the Chief Justice, without the due process of law, the amount of US$500 because the Chief Justice missed his returned flight to Liberia doing his thing? What a way to attract foreign investors to Liberia .
--when the same Chief Justice jailed the publisher of a leading newspaper in Liberia for one week because the publisher/journalist did not have a lawyer to represent him at a hearing before the Chief Justice after the journalist’s lawyer in court declined to represent him, and the Chief Justice should have requested that the government must provide a lawyer for the defendant/publisher, and warning the reporter: “you better not play with me”?
For Africa’s first female elected president and a Nelson Mandela want-to-be one termer as you promised; where are the FALSE DIVIDES in Liberia :
--when you still refuse to prosecute officials implicated in 30-plus audits of corruption conducted by the independent General Auditing Commission;
--when you the President--not during a corruption trial in a court of law--vowed to put her head on the chopping block to defend an accused corrupt minister, and trying to be the judge, jury and executioner;
--when the National Elections Commission (NEC) refuses opposition party request to re-count votes in a disputed election in which the NEC chair wrote the opposition saying it cheated the opposition;
--when in genuine democracies around the world including in the United States votes are disputed and therefore re-counted to promote a free, fair and transparent election process, and so why not in Liberia?;
--when the prisons in Liberia are overcrowded and not conducive to hold humans, and where suspects are held, some for over a year without trail in violation of their constitutional rights, according to the International Red Cross;
Are Liberians seeing FALSE DIVIDES:
--when on foreign trips you constantly boast of attracting over US$16 billion worth of foreign investments to Liberia under your presidency, but with unemployment hovering above 85 percent;
--when in the failed Liberian economy, some of your friends and cronies are paid the outrageous salaries of between US$10,000 to US$15,000 a month while the lowest paid civil servant worker takes home less than US$100.00 a month; do you not see TRUE DIVIDES, but instead of what you see as FALSE DIVIDES in a country the United Nations says the average Liberian lives on less than US$1.00 a day?
Are these realities FALSE DIVIDES:
--when there is a broken healthcare system in Liberia that medical centers have literally become death-centers in themselves for the poor, while you and your friends get the best in healthcare every year at taxpayers' expense from the best hospitals in the United States;
--when roads are congested and in need of repairs that they have become death-traps for motorists;
--when traffic is a nightmare on the streets, roads and highways and not a single working traffic light in the country;
In a democracy where transparency and accountability are hallmarks, are these FALSE DIVIDES:
--when you authorized the spending of US$450,000.00 of taxpayers' money on the questionable "Elwood Dunn Commission" to investigate the Willis Knuckles Email Scandal and the Liberian people have long since forgotten about the recommendations now collecting/catching dust under your desk because you will not act on the Dunn Report;
--when you announced that the Dunn Commission was given US$450,000, but then Dunn at the conclusion of his Report when submitting it to you said he was given only US$250,000, and no one has been able to question either you or Dunn about the US$200,000 difference of taxpayers’ money;
--when Elwood Dunn himself who is a paid fulltime professor at an American University in the United States who refused to go and work in Liberia, but was —thanks to his friend Dr. Amos Sawyer-- placed on the payroll of the so-called Good Governance Commission and paid US$4,000 a month as a “Consultant” and was later chosen to head the investigation of his “classmates” from the William R. Tolbert cabinet, into the Willis Knuckles Email Scandal, and knowing very well that Dunn’s brother was working as a Protocol Officer in the President’s Office which would be a clear case of conflict of interest;
--when Amos Sawyer accused two members of the Good Governance Commission of corruption and incompetence over a questionable use of US$1200 of the Commission’s funds, and the two in turn sued Sawyer in a court of law for paying Elwood Dunn US$4000 so that the court may determine who is more corrupt as an effort to help you fight your “war on corruption;” but,
--when you the President urged the two employees of the Good Governance Commission to withdraw their case against Sawyer from court for as you put it, “we don’t need to wash our dirty clothes in public” and that killed the case since;
--when US$600,000.00 was fraudulently wired from a computer in your private residence linked to the Willis Knuckles Email Scandal, and you blamed it on your “friend” who is the sister of the president of one of Liberia’s neighbors, but the “friend” publicly denied ever being in Liberia on the date of the money transfer with supporting evidence of dates with stamped entry and exit visas in her passport;
Again, I ask you Madame President and our “Progressives,” are these still FALSE DIVIDES in Liberia?
--when you ironically set up a "Special Commission” after Bloody Monday in your artificial "FALSE DIVIDES" Liberia to investigate, and you promise that "all those found to have broken the law will be brought to justice;" I still ask, do you truly and honestly see "FALSE DIVIDES” that you can't see a bloody, bleeding and divided Liberia and the anger and tears of our people?
I await your answers as you ironically join your other classmates before you---Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, The Madiba Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and others, and as you prepare to go and receive your Nobel Peace Prize early next year in Oslo, Norway. And what would they be thinking now if they could look back and see where Liberia is today: the late G. Baccus Matthews, Albert Porte, TuanWreh, David Coleman, Henry Boima Fahnbulleh Sr., Jackson F. Doe, Nattie Sieh Brownell, Dr. Morias, Juah Nimely and D. Tweh, just to name a few?
Dr. Fahnbulleh, Dr.Tipoteh, and Dr.Sawyer, why, why and why? You have disappointed many who once believed in you. But it may not be too late to redeem yourself. History’s final chapter is not yet written on you depending on how you may want to end your career. May God Bless Liberia ! Print and pass a copy on to others; spread the message. More coming soon.
In the Cause of the People, the Struggle Continues!
Jerry Wehtee-Maotee Wion
Executive Producer/Director
Liberian African News Service, LANS
240-764-7267--LANS Newsline
301-789-7786
Email: WionLANS@aol.com
Mr. Wion was Executive Mansion Presidential Reporter for government-owned ELBS-TV 1979-1981 during the Administrations of William R. Tolbert, Jr. and Master-Sergeant Samuel K. Doe of the PRC.
