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Elect
City Mayors, Superintendents and all County and
District officials
Wednesday,
November 28, 2007
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
I can still remember some of the speeches made during the All
Liberian National Conference sponsored by the Union of
Liberian Associations in the Americas (ULAA), in
Columbia, Maryland in 2005, in support of municipal
elections and decentralization of government and its services, when
Liberians gathered that weekend to address a unifying
issue about the system of government in their country.
That
particular event brought the best out of Liberians
known to shine (as if they invented the English
language), especially when they are articulating with
precision political issues and the direction of their
beloved Liberia.
That is because many of the participants at
the convention are fully aware of the neglect of their
people and their
respective regions by the national government, and the
unequal distribution of political power and tax
revenues collected from those regions then and now by
a powerful centralized Liberian government. The
participants are also aware of how the system is set
up in a way that it sucks life out of the citizens
living in and outside of the capital, does not empower
the residents in the political subdivisions to be
self-governed without government micromanaging and
interfering in the activities of those regions through
its appointed sycophantic officials who must answer to
the selfish wishes and caprices of the president,
else, would be terminated immediately.
A
cross-section of Liberians listening to a speaker
during the 2005 All Liberian National Conference
in Columbia, Maryland.
It is an admirable system that works only
when you are the undisputed President of Liberia who
wields absolute power, a president who controls the
nation’s money and decides how and where to disburse
it annually. It is also an oppressive system that does
not work when you are a Liberian who is unemployed, is
trailing at the bottom of the totem pole, is required
to pay taxes without genuine representation but whose
political subdivision bankrolls the Liberian
government by virtue of its taxes and natural
resources, yet cannot decide the political and
economic fate of his or her county.
No joke about it, the system of
government that grants absolute authority to the
President of Liberia and relegates the other counties
other than the capital, Monrovia, to second-class
status needs to be revisited; because of all things
that has hampered the development of Liberia, a
centralized form of government can be cited as one of
the impediments.
Because when taxes and raw materials
that belongs to a particular county are taken away in
broad daylight leaving the county and its citizens
with nothing to show for what is taken from them in
terms of political and economic power, home and street
lights, parks and recreational facilities, trash collections, paved streets, clean
drinking water, modern sewer and storm drain (water)
control facilities, clean air and a cleaner
environment, postal system, police vehicles, colleges,
high schools, erosion control, hospitals and
affordable healthcare, jobs, etc, then there is a
problem.
That
is why there was a sigh of relief in Liberian
communities at home and abroad when words spread that
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who at one time in
her young administration seemed to support the status
quo when she appointed Ophelia Hoff-Saytumah as City
Mayor of Monrovia, and according to an August 2007,
Liberian Dialogue article also contemplated appointing
presidential friend Mary Broh to the mayoral position,
reportedly is committed to holding superintendents and
mayoral elections in October 2008, a cautious sign of
progress many would be watching.
However, buried in the hoopla about the
holding of superintendents and mayoral elections are
the elections for city councilmen and councilwomen not
mentioned in the news story, perhaps, because it is
something the president overlooked or didn’t
consider to be important.
Because when city councilmen and
women are not elected to balance the political
equation to work side-by-side with the mayors,
superintendents and paramount chiefs (the highest
ranking tribal leader in the chiefdom), to make
decisions in the interests of the people in the counties and
districts it is like putting water in a bucket
with holes at the bottom, which drains out the water
because of the lack of preparation and the willpower
to repair the holes and do it right the first time
before putting water in the bucket.
And if city mayors and
superintendents are elected without city councilmen
and women to run those counties/cities, and are not
empowered to be politically and economically
independent – to make decisions for their people and
to collect their own tax revenues that is spent in
their regions, it would be a useless exercise like the
bucket that couldn’t hold the water because of the
holes at the bottom, a waste of time and resources
that will only take us back to where we have always
been for more than a century in the history of our
country. If the elections cannot take place next year
because of logistical and other reasons, those reasons
should be dealt with now so as not to find a
convenient reasons to cancel them, which will not serve
President Sirleaf well because it is not about the
president, it is about the future of Liberia and its
people.
If the municipal elections are done the
right way and with good intentions, it would
definitely be a first and a break from our tyrannical
past when generations of Liberians were ruled by
appointed government officials who did not care for
their well being because they were being micromanaged
from Monrovia, and were only appointed to protect the
selfish political and economic interests of the
president in power.
This is exactly the time for the elected
national leaders, the Representatives and Senators and
activist groups to do all they can to ratchet up the
pressure on the executive branch and President Sirleaf
so that the upcoming municipal elections will not only
become a reality, but will have all the pieces in
place to truly represent
the wishes and aspirations of the Liberian people.
My
colleagues who dreamed of municipal elections and decentralization
of government and its services during the
All Liberian National Conference in Columbia, Maryland
in 2005, would be watching this one with much interest.
I will be watching also.
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