Lewis
G. Brown, II: Social Justice Advocate or Mere Job Seeker?
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
By
Moses D. Sandy
Free speech is a
rudimentary tenet of every democracy. It is an inalienable right guaranteed by
the UN Convention on human rights. But the exercise of freedom of speech is not
absolute; it goes with social responsibility-taking liability for the abuse
thereof.
In most democratic
societies including contemporary Liberia, freedom of speech is respected,
protected and espoused by political leaders. Since the ascendancy of the Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf administration to power more than four years ago, one
significant political accomplishments, which the government can jealously pride
itself for, is free speech. The government has fostered and promoted freedom of
free speech in post war Liberia, a triumph, which seems unprecedented in the
country’s 162 years of political existence.
In today’s
Liberia, the autonomy to be heard regardless of political, economic and social
status is assured. There are no political prisoners in the country. No one
including journalists has been intimidated or incarcerated for speaking against
societal ills, or the government. Wow! What a major achievement after 14 years
of misrule and political instability. Because of the government’s tolerance
for free speech, the nation’s media landscape has expanded with the
proliferation of newspapers, radio and television stations in the country. And
many individuals including former political leaders, who once stifled freedom of
speech in successive administrations, have also joined the chorus in speaking
out.
Liberia’s former
Foreign Minister in the last days of the Taylor administration, Lewis G. Brown
II, is one of few politicians in Sirleaf’s Liberia, who is literarily enjoying
the right to free speech. In recent years, ex-Minister Brown has arrogated unto
himself the title, “advocate for social justice.” In his crusade for
transparency in the public sector and an equitable Liberia, Mr. Brown has gained
prominence in the media at home and abroad for being one of the foremost critics
of the Sirleaf administration.
He is noted for
routinely bad mouthing the administration for what he considers as the
government’s “failed economic, social, political and educational
policies.” For example, in January of this year, when President Sirleaf,
during the State of the Union address at the national legislature announced her
candidacy for the 2011 presidential election in Liberia, the former minister,
like most opposition Liberian politicians condemned the pronouncement. He also
drew Mrs. Sirleaf’s credibility and style of leadership into question.
He argued, “No
president, since the foundation of our republic, has so diminished and
disfigured the Office of the President, and desecrated the sacredness of the
duties thereunto assigned like President/candidate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.”
Even though Mr. Brown is yet to pin point any provision in the 1986 revised
constitution of Liberia that debars any sitting Liberian president, including
Mrs. Sirleaf from making public their quest for a 2nd term of office
when delivering the yearly State of the Union address at the legislature, he
contended, it was constitutionally wrong for the President to have used the
occasion for the launching of her candidacy.
In the wake of Mr. Brown’s self-styled crusade for an
“honest and just Liberia”, some of the several questions, which most
Liberians and friends of Liberia including the author of this article at home
and the Diaspora have often asked are: Who is Lewis Brown? When did he become an
advocate for social justice in Liberia? Is Lewis Brown craving political
attention, or appointment in the Sirleaf Administration? Is Lewis Brown a wolf
in sheep’s clothing? Does he have the moral standing to point fingers at
anyone for corruption or social injustices in Liberia? Well, this article is
meant to provide answers to some of these salient questions. It takes a critical
look at the former minister’s public life, his deeds in the public domain, and
the motive for his campaign for a “just and corrupt free Liberia”.
Mr. Brown’s Role in the NPFL
Prior to December
24, 1989, when the then National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) launched its
fratricidal war on Liberia, the former Foreign Minister was an ordinary student
at the University of Liberia (UL). His popularity was confined only to the
perimeters of the UL campus and his neighborhood. In other words, he was a
non-entity in Liberian politics. But in the 1990’s, Mr. Brown’s quest for
political eminence in Liberia started to gain ground when he like most UL
students at the time, joined the dreaded NPFL forces. Simply put, he became an
NPFL rebel.
The NPFL was the
biggest rebel faction in the just ended Liberian civil war. Dictator Charles
Taylor then led the group. Mr. Taylor is currently detained in The Hague on 50
counts of human rights violations, including conspiring with the rebels of the
disbanded United Revolutionary Front (RUF) of the late Corporal Foday Sankor to
destabilize the Republic of Sierra Leone. The NPFL was one of the most fearful
and ruthless gangster groups West Africa has ever produced in recent history.
During the heydays of the civil war, NPFL rebels were notoriously known for
maiming and raping innocent Liberian women and girls. The group was also
unpopular for the brutal manner in which its forces slaughtered thousands of
Liberians including infants on flimsy accounts. The 14-year civil conflict in
Liberia is reported to have claimed more than 250 thousand human lives. Rag tag
soldiers of the NPFL and other warring factions are reported to have also
pillaged and vandalized properties worth millions of dollars.
Despite the
disbanded NPFL’s appalling national and international human rights records at
the time, Mr. Brown, the professed “Messiah” for a “just and honest
Liberia”, was one of the force’s rebel leaders who shuttled regularly from
one capitol of the world to another to justify the group’s plundering of the
nation’s natural resources (gold. diamond, rubber, etc), and the wanton
destruction of innocent human lives at international peace conferences held on
Liberia. He and some of Mr. Taylor’s war cronies promoted and championed the
cause of the NPFL’s so-called revolution at the detriment of the Liberian
masses. They also accumulated wealth overnight from the booty of the war.
Mr. Brown’s Role in the Taylor
Administration
As one of Mr.
Taylor’s loud-mouthed spokesmen in the dispersed NPFL in 1997, when the former
NPFL leader was elected President of Liberia, Mr. Brown was one of the
former NPFL’s
rebel czars who benefited enormously from the Taylor administration. He was one
of the trusted aides of the ex-President, a member of his inner circle, and was
also his confidante, who had the ears of the now imprisoned former President.
Brown held a number of key positions in the Taylor government, serving one time
as National Security Advisor to the erstwhile President. Prior to serving as
National Security Advisor, he worked at the Liberia Petroleum Refinery
Corporation (LPRC) as Managing Director. At the LPRC, the ex-rebel-turned
“social advocate” reportedly siphoned thousands of dollars from the
Corporation’s coffers. Under dubious circumstances, Brown built a fabulous
home, (a mansion by Liberian standard) on the Roberts International Airport (RIA)
highway in ELWA, Liberia.
Given the rapidity
at which the home worth thousands of US dollars was built, the Liberian press
and populace raised concerns about the funding source of the housing project.
The people’s apprehension was predicated on the meager salaries public
officials at the time earned. In Mr. Brown’s defense, his boss, former
President Taylor brushed off the trepidation when he callously remarked “The
young man was investing in the country and that all the talk was just
jealousy,”(The Perspective, 2004). He challenged all public officials in his
administration to replicate Mr. Brown’s “progress.”
Taylor’s Liberia
was a rogue state where there existed no accountability for public revenue. The
former President “functioned without fiscal probity, independent of an
ineffective judiciary and legislature that operated in fear of the
executive,”(Human Rights Watch World Report, 2002). Every senior official of
the government including Mr. Taylor was fixated on obtaining wealth at the
expense of the Liberian taxpayers. Even though the former President at the dawn
of his administration, like most of his predecessors promised to eliminate
corruption from the public sector, he failed miserably.
His reign was one
of the most dishonest administrations in Liberian history. He gained notoriety
globally for administering the political affairs of the country like a fiefdom.
Mr. Taylor unilaterally decided who gets what, when, and why. Human Rights
Watch, in its 2002 World Report on Liberia put the unemployment rate in
Taylor’s Liberia at 80%; while basic services such as health care,
communications, electricity and the public supply of drinking water remained
extremely limited. And public and private institutions in the country
deteriorated amid widespread corruption and fear.
Mr.
Brown’s Hypocrisy
Mr. Brown’s
latest struggle for social justice in Liberia is paradoxical; and it seems
bizarre. He is a graduate of a rag tag army, and an administration that never
subscribed to the very democratic tenets to which he now seems so passionate
about. When he served in the then NPFL and the Taylor administration, phrases
and words such as social justice, accountability, audit, transparency, fiscal
probity, among others never formed part of his daily lexicons. Although two
wrongs do not make one right, Mr. Brown’s current campaign against the Sirleaf
administration and what he calls “societal ills” in Liberia is doing him
more harm than good.
For instance, the
former NPFL guru in a recent speech said: “We Are Too Smart to Stubbornly
Repeat the Wrongs of Yesteryears,”(The Liberian Journal, 2010), he delivered
at the 2010 commencement of the Graduate School of Business at the University of
Liberia, frowned on the Sirleaf administration for doing little or nothing
toward the enhancement of public education. But comparatively, the Sirleaf
regime has done more for public education in Liberia than the National Patriotic
Party (NPP) led government. The government since coming to power, has upgraded
and built several public institutions in the country with the latest being the
University of Liberia Fendel Campus based in Montserrado County, and the Senje
Polytechnic College located in Grand Cape Mount County. These institutions,
according to President Sirleaf are to commence regular academic work in
September 2010.
On the contrary,
when the NPP, Mr. Taylor and the self proclaimed “social advocate”, Lewis
Brown governed Liberia, they paid lip service to public education. For example,
the administration in January 2002 passed a law, which spelled out the
allocation of 25% of the government’s fiscal budget to education. But
regrettably, the law was never implemented. The regime’s indifference to
public education in Liberia annoyed Mr. Taylor’s ex-Minister of Education, Dr.
Evelyn Kandakai when she remarked, “The government should spend more money on
education than it is spending now,”(Inter Press Service, 2004). Besides under
funding public education, the administration was also unpopular for the brutal
manner in which its security forces responded to student crises in the country.
The March 2002 raid
of the UL main campus in Monrovia by state security troops including officers of
the Liberia National Police (LNP) Special Operation Division (SOD), and the Anti
Terrorist Unit (ATU) is a case in point. During that raid, the troops reportedly
assaulted and arrested unarmed students, who had assembled to raise legal fees
for detained journalists. The Taylor government accused the detained journalists
of preaching hate messages against the administration. More than forty students
were allegedly tortured while security forces raped some of the female students
(Human Rights Watch World Report, 2002). Although Mr. Brown, the so-called
social advocate is an alumnus of the University of Liberia, and at the time
served as National Security Advisor to Mr. Taylor, he neither condemned nor said
anything about the situation. He sanctioned the government’s approach to the
students’ riot because he was part of the status quo.
In terms of human
rights, the former Foreign Minister is also on record for disparaging the
Sirleaf administration for being apathetic to the protection of human rights in
Liberia. In his recent commencement speech, “We Are Too Smart to Stubbornly
Repeat the Wrongs of Yesteryears,” Mr. Brown, the purported “man of the
people,” argued, “How can we sing praises and kumbayahs in the face of real
threats to return the country to its discredited past- a most unfortunate
deviation from the causes for which they voluntarily and involuntarily gave up
their lives and limbs?” This claim by the former National Security Advisor
against the Sirleaf administration is another hypocrisy and a ploy to
misrepresent what is happening politically in Liberia. Sirleaf’s Liberia is
not a utopia; there are wrong doings. But comparatively, the human rights
records of the Sirleaf government are 99% better off than those of the NPP
regime.
It is an opened
secret that the Taylor administration, which Mr. Brown whole-heartedly
cherishes, had one of the worst human rights records in the history of Liberia
and West Africa as a whole. For instance, when he was National Security Advisor
in the NPP government, what did he do when some armed bandits of the ATU in
2002, executed the following gruesome acts in Liberia as cataloged by Human
Rights Watch in its 2002 World Report?
- On
June 19, 2002, an ATU officer and presidential guards reportedly opened fire
on a taxicab in Monrovia, and instantly killed a six-year-old child and
critically injured his mother and the driver. Former President Taylor
ordered a probe into the matter, but the outcome of that investigation was
never made public.
- In
September 2002, the Lt. Isaac Gono, a driver, who was assigned to the head
of the ATU, Charles Chucky Taylor, jr., was brutally murdered in Monrovia.
The late Gono, upon the directive of Chucky Taylor was beaten to
death by his colleagues, as a disciplinary measure for denting a vehicle
assigned to Mr. Taylor’s son. Two soldiers were arrested and held for
court martial but the matter was never resolved.
Disappointingly,
when the ATU troops took the life of those innocent Liberians, especially the
six-year old child, the ex-National Security Advisor turned “social
advocate,” neither condemned the ATU nor Mr. Charles Taylor, Jr. for the wrong
committed, because he was an embodiment of the Taylor administration. What a
double standard.
Regarding poverty
reduction, Mr. Brown in his “We Are Too Smart to Stubbornly Repeat the Wrongs
of Yesteryears” speech, again, reiterated his antipathy for the Sirleaf
administration’s socio-economic policies. He cried out, “Majority swim daily
in a sea of poverty and hopelessness in a country blessed with plenty-a country
where a few sacrificed with fabulous salaries and others are downsized because
they come from another party, or from other parts of the country.” Mr.
Brown’s assertion is another manifestation of hypocrisy. Anyone, who knows
Liberian history will concede that the Sirleaf Administration’s strides toward
poverty reduction in Liberia are far better than those initiated by the NPP
government. Since coming to power, the administration, with the support of its
national and international partners has undertaken several poverty reduction
initiatives including the creation of jobs, increment in civil servants salaries
and road construction. Presently, the minimum wage for unskilled civil servants
in Liberia is $80. Furthermore, salaries for government employees are current.
In contrast, when
the NPP administered the political affairs of Liberia for more than five years,
civil servants earned as low as $10 monthly. The wage of an unskilled public
employee at the time could not purchase a 50kg sack of rice-the nation’s
staple, which at the time costs at least US $22 (IRIN, 2005). Despite the low
wages, the Taylor administration did not pay salaries on time. According to the
Civil Servant Association, when the Taylor regime crumbled in 2003, the
government was obligated to the nation’s 65, 000 civil servants, up to 18
months of wage arrears (IRIN, 2005). But the masses worked without compensations
as the Browns, Taylors and other executives of the NPP, without any remorse
literarily showered in the taxpayers’ monies by paying themselves undisclosed
fabulous salaries regularly. They built mansions overnight and bought flashy
cars. Although Mr. Brown, the self-styled “Messiah” witnessed the appalling
conditions, which most civil servants at the time lived, he opted to remain mute
because he was a member of the inner circle.
Sirleaf’s
Liberia is not an unblemished society or a paradise on earth. There are issues
of corruption and malfeasances in the public and private sectors, but these are
problems that are not unique to Liberia. They are universal problems, which most
governments like the Ellen Johnson administration contend with daily; and the
government has put in place corrective measures aimed at curtailing them.
Moreover, the political, economic, and social accomplishments of the Sirleaf
administration, since coming to power in 2005 far exceeds those achieved by Mr.
Brown and the NPP regime.
Liberia is evolving
from a 14-year anarchy initiated by the then NPFL. The economic prosperity for
all Liberians as defined by the former Foreign Minister, “Man of the people”
will not be obtained over night. It will take time, energy, strategic planning
and resources. So, Mr. Brown, the so-called Messiah must give peace a chance by
“letting sleeping dogs lie.” He is not a saint. His deeds and associations
of the past do not qualify him to draw anyone character into question for
malfeasance. He does not have the moral standing to engage in such campaign. Mr.
Brown must understand that the days of his relevance in Liberian politics are
over. No amount of political gimmicks or pseudo social advocacy will catapult
him to a political appointment in the Sirleaf administration. Today’s Liberia
needs men and women of Principles, Substance, Integrity and Honesty,
but not flip floppers as witnessed in the Taylor administration.
Disclaimer: The
author of this article is not a spokesman of the Sirleaf Administration; and the
views expressed in this piece are not representative of the Liberian Government.
Moses
D. Sandy is an exiled Liberian Journalist. He resides in Delaware, USA. Mr.
Sandy is also a career social worker with Master’s in Social Work (MSW) from
Temple University Graduate School of Social Administration based in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Prior to resettling in the US, he earned a BA in
Broadcast Journalism from the Mass Communication Department of the University of
Liberia. He’s former Editor-in-Chief of the Liberia Broadcasting System. He
can be reached @ 302-494-4688(cell)/ E-mail: mdogbasandy@aol.com
.
