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A
traveling President Sirleaf and a toothless Press
Union of Liberia
Saturday,
April 07, 2007
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
I expected
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's supporters to e-mail me or
call to vindicate me and others for constantly
highlighting the persistent leadership flaws of this
president, in the wake of her historic acknowledgement
that mistakes were indeed made in her government in
terms of corruption, her recent assault on free speech
and other issues regarding the nation she now governs.
Knowing these individuals, they will not
attempt to make that gesture, nor will they accept the
fact that President Sirleaf is a human who can also
make mistakes; and that it takes a real person to
realize and accept his or her mistakes, apologize for
it and move on in times like these when the president
needs the efforts of all Liberians to help rebuild
that crumbling nation.
Pres. Sirleaf meets with "media executives"
President Sirleaf did not mention her frequent
foreign travels as one of her many flaws, and did not
think it is a problem for a president to leave the
country almost every month in the name of seeking debt
relief, even though there is a (stealth) Foreign
Minister, George Wallace a competent Finance Minister,
Antoinette Sayeh and others in her administration who
could have followed-up with negotiations after the
president’s initial visit to a particular country.
As usual, The Liberian Dialogue has been in the
forefront of this issue writing critically from day
one of presidential arrogance and neglect after
President Sirleaf’s first few foreign trips; and has
also been fearless in its criticism of a president
whose penchant for foreign travels tends to take away
her focus from important issues for which she was
elected president of that war-torn country.
Now that the Liberian Senate is also fuming and
flexing its muscles and finally asking tough questions
about President Sirleaf’s frequent foreign travels,
this columnist feel a sense of relief and vindication
for the mere fact that others are now seeing what I
saw, and are also speaking out against what is
obviously presidential abuse of the nation’s meager
financial resources, and a president who is
accountable to no one.
However, it took bad publicity about censorship
culminating from the Knuckles sex scandal, runaway
corruption in her year-old administration and other
heart-wrenching national issues to get a president –
President Sirleaf for that matter to briefly abandon
her trademark stubbornness and accept the fact that
the only way to deal with those issues is for her to
bend and genuinely work with others in order to find
practical solutions to the nation’s problem.
After all, compromise is the hallmark of good
governance, and when stubbornness, as corrosive as it
can be is injected into national discourse can affect
an entire nation and people, a result of the bad
feelings generated when the leader refuses to value
the opinions of others.
It is unbelievable that supporters of President
Sirleaf would even think critics of her “frequent
flyer” leadership style are anti-progress when they
go after her. Many of these people don’t mean any
harm when they get aggressive with her and demand that
she change from being a showboat to being substantive
in finding practical solutions to the Liberian crisis.
Some of us, not out of hate for President
Sirleaf but out of patriotism and abiding love for the
Liberian people and country, garnered the courage to
be the voice of the hopeless in these trying times
when a cup of rice is hard to come by; when grown men
and women walking in the streets are hungry and
penniless and cannot afford to buy a loaf of bread or
an egg to eat because of the obvious lack of jobs and
opportunities; when erosion is chewing away sizeable
chunck of the country; when children are going to bed
hungry; when women are being abused, still struggling
and cannot make ends meet even with the
“invention” of a Gender Ministry, yet a president
can afford to travel all over the world?
And when those issues are ever discussed in a
public forum such as this column, the president’s
die-hard supporters sees nothing wrong with the lack
of leadership on the issues raised, but wants to dwell
on her trailblazing role as “the first elected
female president of the African continent,” a proud
and personal distinction for the president, which does
not translate into jobs and daily meals for the
Liberian people.
In another development and during her recent
meeting with the Press Union of Liberia and its often
broke members who called themselves “media
executives,” to discuss censorship after the
president and her Ministers of Justice, Information
and Solicitor General banned the Independent Newspaper
for publishing a threesome sexual photo of her former
aide Willis Knuckles, the president vowed “there is
absolutely no intention to censor the press.”
But the reality is that the press was censored
and intimidated, the newspaper was banned for a year,
and its publisher went into hiding fearing for his
safety and freedom under a president who was elected
through the democratic process.
This is a political blunder of monumental
proportion for this administration to censor free
speech, which clearly shows how people can easily
forget the past and forget where they come from.
That’s because the president and her
Solicitor General Tiawon Gongloe owed their personal
and political survival to the hard work, dedication
and good will of others who campaigned endlessly for a
democratic Liberia; and paid a price to defend those
individuals when they were victims of censorship and
oppression under previous dictatorial Liberian
presidents.
While the administration was busy shutting down
the newspaper, The Press Union of Liberia (PUL), a
group whose business it is to protect its members and
protect free speech not only joined the administration
in carrying out its anti-democratic policy against
freedom of expression, agreed with the
administration’s position by citing its own policy
against the publishing of materials deemed indecent by
its governing board.
In a face-saving move, however, the so-called
“media executives” later met with President
Sirleaf to discuss censorship and the
administration’s action against a member. Why
grandstand later to discuss censorship with the
president? Isn’t the move too little, too late?
The Press Union of Liberia needs to fold
because the body has outlived its usefulness, its
reason for being and made a mockery of themselves and
the institution by engaging in “survivalist”
journalism, as usual.
What a shame!
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