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Editorial
farce, The Perspective and Aloysius Toe
(When
the shoe is on the other foot)
Monday,
November 20, 2006
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
I remember
the time when political activists in the United States
took to the streets, or the time some of us wrote
editorial columns to protest previous Liberian
government's terrible records of corruption,
malfeasance and human rights abuse.
I am still protesting today to have a clean and
open government, to halt corruption, to bring
government to the people and for government to respond
to the needs of the Liberian people.
Pres. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Aloysius Toe
I am not writing against Presidents Samuel
Kanyon Doe or Charles Taylor this time but against our
newly minted president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whom I
want to believe has not lived up to her billing and
is in the position of disappointing a lot of people,
because of her frequent flyer and absentee approach to
governance and other issues that will define her
legacy.
She is not listening to her people and perhaps
is not feeling their pain. She wants to be everything
- Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trade Negotiator,
Minister of Commerce, awards recipient, and is eager
to travel wherever her name is mentioned as the first
elected female president on the African continent
while the entire country falls apart in her absence.
It is not any surprise that some of us are in
the forefront of trying to bring this president back to
the reasons the Liberian people elected her in the
first place – that is to quickly respond to their
needs and improve their living conditions before their
patience runs out.
It is not a surprise, either, that some of us
did what we did with passion when we publicly took on
her dictatorial, corrupt and insensitive predecessors
that told us one thing and did the opposite even when
our lives and that of our relatives were constantly in
danger.
However, when those Liberian government
couldn’t get the out-of-country activists to rein
terror on them, the government turned its terror
campaign on dissident Liberians at home in its quest
to suppress them. And yes, those activists and
journalists were terrorized and some exiled for doing
what any decent and patriotic Liberian would do for
his or her people.
The current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
who was an opposition did her part, (which is well
documented) by discrediting previous Liberian
governments (the Doe and Taylor administrations) whose
policies she disagrees with, and ran an effective
international lobbying campaign to oust them.
Whether Ms. Sirleaf benefited financially from
her international opposition efforts is unknown,
because she was never audited by the Liberian people
to know from whom, where and how much she garnered in
the many years she traveled worldwide to speak against
those governments.
It didn’t bother the opposition at the time
to question who was financing Ellen’s political
crusade, and did not bother to ask why was she
constantly attacking Samuel Kanyon Doe and Charles
Taylor, because they figured she was on their side as
they were willing to dance with anyone who was seen as
being on their side denouncing those corrupt and
repressive regimes.
I worked with George H. Nubo on the editorial
staff of The Perspective when it was then a credible,
unknown but struggling newspaper before it became a
household name, and after it transitioned to the Web
as a political news organ.
As an original cast member of the Perspective,
we dealt with all issues political as they presented
themselves, and did not take sides by discrediting or
attempting to discredit those whose politics we
disagree with because we favored the occupant in the
Executive Mansion.
Our mission was democracy and accountability in
Liberia, and pressuring the administration to be
sensitive by addressing the plight of the Liberian
people in a practical way.
That unified front, I guess stems from the fact
that we had a common enemy, the devil, Charles Taylor
whom we wanted out of office dead or alive, and we did
all we could to be heard and were effective through
our newfound news outlet, The Perspective.
One Peter Kieh Doe, then a paid public
relations hatchet man for the Taylor administration who claimed to
know me in New Kru Town
attacked me in one of his monologues as a “chicken
rogue,” who stole during my days there.
Talking about the total lacked of ideas and
reducing the issues to slander and falsely accusing
the other side? That’s one.
So when I received what seems to be an article
e-mailed to me supposedly written by George Nubo, I
sincerely though the piece was a continuation of the
advocacy role we played that pushed The Perspective
into the stratosphere when I was a member of the
editorial group that built it to the success it once
enjoyed over those years before the proliferation of
Liberian political Web sites.
However, I was disappointed once I read the
article, “The Human Farce and the UNMIL
Conspiracy,” and was even more disappointed by the
attacks on Aloysius Toe, and was quickly reminded of
Peter Kieh Doe, the guy who falsely accused me of
stealing chicken, and who constantly wrote The
Perspective those days by attacking its writers for
holding Charles Taylor’s feet to the fire for his
total lacked of leadership.
I expected to read an exclusive and provocative
piece in which Mr. Nubo attempts to hold his
reader’s undivided attention by highlighting the
profound differences between The Perspective and
Aloysius Toe’s position on the issues, by showing
where the human rights’ advocate is wrong in his
criticism of President Sirleaf.
Instead, I was faced with a diatribe that
chronicles Toe’s perceived bad behavior and,
according to Nubo, some “agents of the international
community in justifying their continued presence in
Liberia and getting rich at the expenses of
Liberians.”
Nubo also asserts: “Mr. Toe, a human rights
defender, is therefore making money out of badmouthing
the government, not to offer criticisms that Liberians
and their leaders could use to improve things, but
rather to criticize so that he can receive funding.”
By going after Toe the way he did, Nubo
dabbled into an excruciatingly familiar style in
Liberian journalism by playing deaf and blind to
presidential misdeeds in favor of undermining others
to protect the administration and put money in the
pockets of the journalists.
And like most Liberian newsgroups, Nubo acted
like a hired hand than an actual reporter – perhaps
a paid mouthpiece for the administration when he
attempts to discredit and publicly attack Aloysius Toe
for finding the courage to take on President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf.
Another excerpt (verbatim) found in a paragraph
of Nubo’s piece:
“Mr. Toe’s opinion, however, was not buried
with the results of the 2005 presidential elections,
judging from his activities since the election of this
administration. He is bent on destroying the
administration.”
How is Toe trying to destroy the
administration, I wonder? What is the crime for which
Aloysius Toe was publicly charged and found guilty in
the court of George Nubo and his “The
Perspective?”
Why go after Toe and not write a serious column
that informs and educates the Liberian people about President
Sirleaf and her administration, its many shortfalls
like presidential arrogance, the government’s
failure to find a lasting solution to the rice issue,
the shooting death of SSS agent Emmanuel Williams by
deputy Ashford Peal, during a shootout with director
Chris Massaquoi still unresolved, judicial
interference, the recent report of the absentee
Governance Reform Commission’s members who
presumably are not working in Liberia but are being
paid monthly salaries of one thousand dollars, and
many more?
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, I don’t want
to believe was elected by the Liberian people to be
insulated from criticism, as George Nubo and others in
her camp want us to believe. Nubo and his friends
cannot continue to intimidate others who dared
criticize the president, or face their wrath of public
insults and condescension.
Our job is never to allow our relationships
with a sitting president (we like and admire) to cloud
our advocacy roles, to question our judgment and
undermine our credibility.
Nubo’s piece exposed him for what he has
become lately, and did not do The Perspective any
justice.
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