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Vice
Pres. Boakai is dead wrong: The president's duties
also include job creation
Monday,
October 22, 2007
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
I don't know what
Vice President Joseph Boakai was thinking when he made
the obviously naïve and insensitive comments that his
Unity Party-led government “was not elected to
provide jobs” for Liberians, in a society where most
Liberians are unemployed.
Had he put on his thinking cap and briefly
shred himself of his high-profile political post and
be a struggling civilian for just a day, the vice
president probably would understand the painful
realities of living and walking around the capital and
other parts of the country without a job, and living
at the mercy of others, who don’t have a clue as to
where the next meal will come from the next day.
Vice Pres. Joseph N. Boakai
Had the vice president put on his thinking
cap before speaking, he probably would have been
reminded of written reports from reputable groups that
linked unemployment to boredom and crimes, especially
in a place like Liberia with a sad history of civil
war where it has been hinted that the obvious lack of
jobs could drive the already vulnerable ex-combatants,
with much time on their hands back into the
opportunistic hands of some rebel leaders who could
use them to stir up more trouble.
Interestingly enough, Mr. Boakai, who comes
from a line of clueless and arrogant government
officials known to make reckless and irresponsible
comments about issues of the day they don’t know a
thing about don’t have to worry about paying a
political price, because those individuals are
accountable to only the president and not the
citizenry, which leaves the penalty a government
official often pays for being stupid to the discretion
of a sitting president when he or she deems it
necessary.
When you are Joseph Boakai, who can make
such inflammatory statement of this kind that goes
unchallenged only to later engage in damage control
after the original remarks have been leaked tells me once
again that we are not out of the woods yet in terms of
official miscalculations, even if the vice president
hurriedly sent out a corrected version of what he want
us to believe he actually said.
“The Unity Party was not elected just to
create jobs for its citizens, but rather to set up a
reform agenda aimed at transforming all sectors of the
Liberian society,” he said are his original
comments.
Even if Boakai made the remarks he now
wants us to accept as his official comments, I see no
difference from this one and the one he refused to
acknowledge, as if the so-called “reform agenda”
that is “aimed to transform all sectors of
society” can do without able men and women being put
to work to earn an honest living, because a reform
agenda that is geared toward transforming all sectors
of society, depending on how one interprets it is
linked inextricably to jobs. So what is he talking
about that his party was not elected to provide jobs
for Liberians?
The controversy of “he said” or “he
did not say” brings me back to the words of my late
father, who often would advise me to “be quiet if
you have nothing to say,” because when one speaks
for the sake of speaking just to impress or to play a
role, there is a tendency of misspeaking and making a
fool of oneself.
And to avoid having to come back to correct
what one intended to say and did not say the first
time, it is better to think first then speak from the
heart to mean what you wanted to say. Or just be quiet
to protect yourself from potential communication
breakdown, as the vice president reportedly did.
However, Vice President Boakai remarks
shows how much he understands the politics of
unemployment and the duties of a president; because he
was also quick to reveal in the same sentence how the
nation’s unemployment rate is at 75% in 2007, ten
points down from what the CIA Facts book claimed it to
be since 2003.
If Boakai is correct about the 75% he
cited, isn’t the unemployment statistics alarming
enough for him to join the administration in bringing
leadership to the issue by helping to create jobs in
both the public and private sector?
I don’t know what the almost 2-year old Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf administration and the administrations
that preceded her did for the unemployment rate to
suddenly drop from 85% in 2003 to the vice
president’s figure of seventy-five percent today,
since most Liberians are struggling to find work that
don’t exist and are part of the population
statistics that suggests the poverty line to be at 80%
since 2000.
So if the president and her Unity Party-led
government are not in the business of providing jobs,
who else is going to do it? If Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
did not come to power to create jobs and improve the
dismal standard of living of the Liberian people, then
I am unsure why she ran for president in the first
place.
The vice president’s comments, which did
not help him or the administration portrays him as out
of touch with reality, and made it appear as if Ms.
Sirleaf was elected president only because the nation
sympathizes with her endless desire to be president;
and that she was given the job not to put Liberians to
work, not to build infrastructure and provide a
suitable climate for other things to happen, but her
ascendancy to the highest office of the land was a
result of our collective admiration for this
“Harvard-trained economist” to finally get her
wishes to sit on the throne and glow in the endless
accolade of being the “first elected female
president on the African continent” while countless
Liberians are unemployed and cannot afford a meal and
other basic necessities daily.
The Johnson-Sirleaf administration has
gotten high marks locally and internationally for
being different from its predecessors in terms of
reaching out and speaking passionately about its
domestic agenda, and finding ways to help alleviate
the crisis brought on the nation and its people by a
senseless civil war.
The way to keep the momentum going
and be taken seriously is not for the second in
command – the vice president of the republic to
speak recklessly and be careless about the issues and
the role of the executive branch.
Vice President Joseph Boakai’s role is
not to be a cynic, but to be hopeful of the day when
(if not all), most Liberians will be able to find work
to support their families and not be perpetual
beggars.
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