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Unnecessary
roughness
Monday,
April 24, 2006
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
It all happened
back-to-back, folks, and within a span of a week when
government security forces booted former football star
and presidential candidate George Weah, who was
scheduled to travel out of the country to Nigeria off
his Bellview Airlines flight for having in his
possession a diplomatic passport.
The second incident occurred when members of
the Liberian Senate, frustrated with the bureaucracy
that hindered the disbursement of their benefits and
the deduction of taxes from their allowances, cited
two senior officials of the administration, Minister
without Portfolio Morris Saytumah, and Deputy Finance
Minister Francis Karpeh (who have since been released
from prison)
for contempt, and jailed them for 72 hours at the
Monrovia Central Prison for what the Senators claimed
as “attempting to bring the body into public
disrepute.”
It is one thing after another in
Liberia, a country known for grooming a criminal who
would later fight his way to the presidency, another
criminal and lightweight politician who financed his
way to be the top legislator, and killers who should
have been in prison today, but are committee heads
investigating whether Liberians are truly Liberians
during that sham they called confirmation hearings.
Pres. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
George Manneh Weah
It is of course a sad day in
Liberia when members of that so-called “august
body” jailed others for doing their job, when the
lawmakers are only selfishly looking out for themselves and not
leading a moral crusade to feed every man, woman and
child in that country, so that no one – not a single
Liberian will have to ever go to bed hungry again.
One would think the legislators would even
think and dream big by addressing the crippling
education and healthcare issues in the country; and
use whatever skills they have to author groundbreaking
legislations that would make education and healthcare
affordable and accessible to all Liberians.
Instead, the senators invoked the
c-word and certain passages of the constitution they
believe are politically correct, passages they think
grant them the legal authority to jail members of the
executive branch whose professional judgment they did
not only blatantly refused to listen to but also
disagreed with.
After doing business the way we Liberians
have pitifully done business in that country for so
long, a sane
congressman or congresswoman who sincerely want
drastic change would listen to and taken into
consideration what Deputy Finance Minister Francis
Karpeh had to say about vendors, taxes and the
disbursement of funds.
“If it was decided that the expenditure
was for transport expense,” Karpeh said, “ it will
not be proper to make payments to individuals instead
of the vendors or contractors, therefore they were
caught in a web as to whether to treat such as an
income or expense.”
“Monies cannot be given to individuals as
specified within the recast budget and be treated as
expense.” He therefore suggested that a committee be
set up to discuss the issue.
On the issue of yearly income and deducted
taxes, Karpeh commented that the “level of income on
a yearly basis will be determined by the size of the
income receive yearly.”
The wages for making such an honest statement
to the Honorable Senators during that “plenary
session” is a 72-hour jail sentence because it
“impeded their legislative duties,” the lawmakers
claimed.
What Karpeh said is not difficult to understand
at all, and shouldn’t be. The ideas he articulated
so well from now on
ought to be the standard operating procedure regarding
how
government disburses per diems, with accountability
serving as a key requirement and transparency a
motivating factor.
Why should a traveling Legislator be given his
or her per diem directly, instead of paying it
directly to the vendors or contractors who are
providing the services? And why shouldn’t there be a
debate of ideas as to whether the per diem is taxable
income or just spending money?
When Senators and Representatives
who are supposed to effect change, and whose
legislations are the laws of the land the people must
honor refuses to honor the professional judgment of a
colleague of the other branch of government, says a
whole lot about us, and why we went through that
painful civil war, and why so many of our relatives
and friends died at the cold
hands of others.
I don’t really know whether George Weah was a UN Goodwill Ambassador when he ran for
president in 2005. I also don’t know whether he is a Goodwill Ambassador today, 5 months after the
run-off presidential elections, and 3 months after
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated President of
Liberia.
It is unclear whether President Sirleaf and her
administration are unaware of Weah’s diplomatic
status. One thing I do know is that Weah is a leader
of his Congress for Democratic Change political party.
As a leader of a political party, I don’t know
whether Weah and his security team are supposed to
travel with diplomatic passports if he no longer is a
Goodwill Ambassador.
And since Weah, who spends most of his time in
Liberia after the elections is a frequent
international flyer, why didn’t the administration
notify Weah and others with diplomatic passports in
writing officially about the new passport policy?
Why did the administration sent its National
Security personnel to pursue the popular sports’
icon, as he was about to travel out of the country?
If the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration is
serious about retrieving those diplomatic passports
from individuals who are no longer diplomats, the
government must be serious, fair and balanced in its
policy, and cannot afford to be seen as unfair and
picking on an individual, who, in the minds of many is
her political foe.
What happened to George Weah, and how he
was treated about a diplomatic passport at
Roberts International Airport (RIA) while he was about
to leave the country is bad policy, was never handled
properly, and didn't serve the president well.
Now if the government wants to apologize and play the
mistake defense, Weah and the Liberian people will
accept the apology, hoping that the government will
not be overreaching in the future by violating the
rights of its citizens with whom they have political
disagreements.
Weah is not only an icon to many football aficionados
in and out of Liberia; he is also a political leader
of his party. Whether we agree or disagrees with him, Weah must be given the courtesy, and be
treated with the same respect given to other political leaders.
Now if Weah ever violates the laws of the land, he
must be investigated and prosecuted like any other person whose name is
not George Weah, the football great, would have been
prosecuted.
When the administration behaves otherwise to a
political leader, her action reminds us all of the
insensitive and brutally dictatorial days of the past, when the
draconian Liberian police state of old did not
tolerate dissent, but went after its political enemies
with vengeance.
We just cannot afford to go back to the old days.
Never !
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