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* WARNING: Sexually explicit photo
Knuckles'
threesome photo betrays trust of a loyal Pres. Sirleaf
Wednesday,
February 21, 2007
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
Just days
ago, it was widely reported in the media, and with
fanfare that both the United States and Germany
finally relieved Liberia of the debt ($391m, U.S,
$230m Germany), owed those countries before the
Johnson-Sirleaf administration came to power.
It was a wise political gesture and a
humanitarian one, knowing what that country and its
people has gone through over the years, and knowing
the Sirleaf administration couldn’t function
effectively with a pile of debt staring at their every
move as the government struggles to produce results.
Willis Knuckles engaging in threesome
The president and her financial team did an excellent
job of pursuing debt relief as one of its foreign
policy goals, and were even superb in their
presentations to those countries and institutions the
government owes money by letting them know that
Liberia cannot afford to pay off its outstanding debt,
due to the more than decade-old civil war and other
internal factors that inhibited growth and
development.
Those are reasons to celebrate, and the
possibility of celebrating a new beginning is a
victory for any president, because negotiating is hard
work. And when a two-day partnership forum held days
ago in the United States intended to discuss
Liberia’s ever-present bleak financial future ended
with yet another success story, is a victory for the
president and her financial team.
However, for every good news, there is bad
news, and for every ounce of joy expressed, there is
an ounce of doubt lingering in the minds of others as
to whether Liberia is capable of bouncing back from
the dead to be able to take care of its people.
Will you blame the pessimists for thinking the
way they are thinking? Just look at the week or month
that just ended. Look at the chaos, the disrespect and
disconnect between the branches of government.
You remember the chaos that cost Speaker Edwin
Melvin Snowe his job and the outing of his chief
antagonist, Ketterkumehn Earl Murray, wanted in the
United States for allegedly molesting a 13-year old
girl? Now the Willis Knuckles’ “threesome gate,”
all of which can distract a government.
However, just when President Sirleaf was
celebrating debt relief and a successful forum, came
an embarrassing revelation in the form of what appears
to be a photo of a butt-naked cabinet minister (Chief
of Staff) Willis Knuckles seen engaging in group sex
with two unidentified women at an undisclosed
location.
Yes, Knuckles is the same guy – the
non-engineer, the president’s old friend from their
school days, who, despite his professional limitations
was appointed by his friend to head the nation’s
primary ministry responsible for rebuilding
Liberia’s crumbling infrastructure.
Mr. Knuckles
was transferred from the Ministry of Public Works to
his current position, Minister of State for
Presidential Affairs, in the wake of the 2006
Independence Day Executive Mansion fire that destroyed
the fourth floor, which was first speculated to be the
work of Morris Dukuly and his ethnic Mandingo rebel
leader friend, Sekou Damate Konneh, who visited Dukuly
at his office earlier in the day without a security
clearance.
After a thorough investigation by a team of
fire experts from South Africa, the incident was later
attributed to electrical malfunction, which exonerated
Morris Dukuly.
But before Dukuly could ever reach the point of
exoneration, his name was dragged in the mud and
indicted in the court of public opinion before he
could ever be acquitted. After Dukuly was acquitted,
he did the most honorable thing by leaving an
environment that failed him.
While it is
true that a loss by any individual is the gain of
another, the good ol’ boy Knuckles who was brought
in to fix the problem at the Executive Mansion with
the hopes of applying the managerial skills he honed
while shipping containers from the United States to
Liberia years ago, failed his boss.
As we can see now, Knuckles wasn’t fixing the
problems at the Executive Mansion, but was exploiting
women young enough to be his daughter or granddaughter
whom he used as sexual objects in an embarrassingly
compromising way we have not seen since the days of
the brutal civil war, when drunken and illiterate men
with guns and grenades, some high on deadly drugs used
women held as sex slaves to satisfy their bloated
egos.
Some are arguing this is a private
matter done in a private setting between adults. As
such, Knuckles cannot be held liable for his actions.
My response to those individuals is simple:
Willis Knuckles is a private person occupying a
high-profile public portfolio, working directly with
the President of the Republic of Liberia. I don’t
expect a choirboy to occupy that position, but I
expect someone with class who will bring respect to
the office and his or her president to fill the
position.
So what is President Sirleaf, a female who ran
on a platform to improve the conditions of women; a
president who lobbied for anti-rape and physical abuse
laws to protect women against their unruly men is
going to do about Willis Knuckles? Will she, or will
she not get rid of him?
Or will she just allow him to sit around, work
and let this controversy simmer as she has done with
other crisis in her government? This guy ought to be
fired now! Stay tuned.
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