What is very interesting about your assessment is that
in just two paragraphs, you have succeeded in injecting
a host of falsehoods, among which are the following:
1) FALSEHOOD NO. 1 - ADOPTION OF CHARLES TAYLOR’S
BUDGET.
The National Transitional Government of Liberia under
Chairman Gyude Bryant crafted a Fiscal Budget spanning
the period July 1, 2005 – June 30, 2006. As you
may know, Madam Sirleaf ascended the helm of leadership
on January 16, 2006 after upwards of six months of the
implementation of the Transitional Government’s
Budget. Recognizing the fact that the assumptions underpinning
the Transitional Government’s budget were wanting
in robustness and reality, my first order of business
as Budget Director was to recast the budget inherited
from Chairman Bryant’s administration, which was
to officially lapse on June 30, 2006. Accordingly, we
formulated the “Recast Budget” covering
the period February 1- June 30, 2006 in the amount of
US$44.1M. Recasting the Budget became imperative so
as to address the 150-day Development Plan of the newly-
inaugurated Government and to accommodate, inter alia,
the increase in the number of legislators from seventy-six
(76) in the unicameral National Transitional Legislative
Assembly to ninety-four (94) in the newly-seated 52nd
National Legislature.
Additionally, we introduced a novelty in the budgetary
process by the inclusion in the Recast Budget of US$1M
as “County Development Fund” to be used
on projects specifically identified by district development
councils and other stakeholders of the counties. Building
on this precedent set in the Recast Budget,
the current FY 2006/07 Budget allocates US$2.5M to the
counties as “County Development Fund. Let it be
noted that besides the County Development Fund, the
counties benefit from development activities through
budgetary appropriations provided to such ministries
as Public Works, Health, Education, Agriculture, etc.
So Mr. Editor, where do you come from with your story
about adopting Charles Taylor’s Budget? In the
first place, I did not inherit Charles Taylor’s
Budget but that of Gyude Bryant, which had legal effect
up to June 2006. So, if I were so much of the “adopter”
you tried to portray me to be, I would have adopted
the Gyude Bryant Budget. But I did not. Instead, we
produced the Recast Budget covering the period February
– June 2006. Did you not hear about the Recast
Budget? If you did not, all you should have done was
to ask your correspondent on the ground, and that would
have saved you the embarrassment of transgressing the
aspect of the Journalist Creed that relates to “accuracy”.
On the issue of adopting Taylor’s budget as a
baseline and tagging “percentage increases here
and there”, again you are woefully off the factual
mark. How can you say that I took Taylor’s budget
as a baseline when, unlike Taylor’s budgets, budgets
crafted on my watch include appropriation for county
development, appropriation for the introduction of free
primary education, appropriation for the resuscitation
of the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI),
an entity devastated and neglected by succeeding governments
since the early 90’s, appropriation for the support
of the national teams (the first time ever- ask Deputy
Minister of Sports, Manbue Richards, if you doubt this),
etc? When we increase the budgetary appropriations,
for instance, of the Public Works Ministry from a recent
historical average of under US$2M to US$US$5.6M in order
to capacitate the Public Works Ministry to begin some
serious road rehabilitation work, of the Ministry of
Agriculture from a recent historical average of around
US$500,000 to above US$3,000,000.00, and a host of other
appropriations that represent radical departures from
the past, is that what you call “adopting Charles
Taylor’s budget”?
FALSEHOOD NO. 2: THE BUDGET WAS NEVER MADE
PUBLIC
Mr. Editor, this one is a factual crime of gargantuan
proportion and it really exposes the shallowness of
your analysis. If you were to conduct an impartial research
on my achievement since my incumbency, one thing most
Liberians and foreign partners will readily tell you
is that the budget is now a public document as opposed
to in the past when it was treated as a sacred document.
Sometime in September 2006, I hosted an elaborate press
conference at which I formally released printed copies
of the approved Budget to the Liberian people. I ensured
that copies of the Budget were sent to media institutions,
universities, civil society organizations, human rights
organizations, etc. After distributing more than two
hundred copies free of charge to those institutions
mentioned earlier, we announced that more than six hundred
copies of the budget would be put on sale at a cost
of US$10.00 per copy (the cost of printing a copy was
US$20.00) at the Ministry of Information and at the
Bureau of the Budget. Up to today, we still have copies
of the budget being sold to the general public. Additionally,
since the Bureau of the Budget presently does not have
a web-site, we ensured that the Budget was posted on
the Ministry of Finance website at www.mofliberia.com.
(Check it out now, if you doubt me).
I should add that the draft budget was also made widely
available to the Liberian people and posted on the Ministry
of Finance website to facilitate a robust budget debate,
which for the first time in the history of this country,
saw the remarkable involvement of the Liberian people.
The “Atayee” shops and other intellectual
gatherings around the country were buzzing with fiery
debates on the draft budget, which was a source of delight
to all well-meaning Liberians.
So in light of these facts, Mr. Editor, was it fair
to your reading public for you to assert that the “budget
was never made public”?
FALSEHOOD NO. 3: NGAFUAN HAS NOT BEEN ABLE
TO ARTICULATE THE BUDGET.
Here again, you proved that you have been living on
Pluto, far removed from reality. Articulation of the
budget? I will not speak to this, but if you want the
truth of the matter, I refer you to members of the Legislature
who grilled me on numerous occasions on budget related
issues during the budget debate at the Legislature;
ask T-Max Jlateh, host of the “50-50” talk-show
on Sky 107; asks Joey Kennedy and Soboh George of Star
Radio, hosts of the popular radio talk show, “I
beg to differ” on Star Radio; ask Singbe Johnson
, host of “Tough Talk”, a TV talk-show on
Real TV. If you still harbor doubts about my ability
to articulate the budget, ask the members of the Intellectual
Discourse Committee (IDC) of the University of Liberia
Student Union (ULSU) and students who attended a budget
forum hosted in the Auditorium of the University of
Liberia in August 2006 by the IDC; ask Dan Sayeh and
other civil society leaders who hosted me at a budget
debate held in the Auditorium of the Ministry of Gender
during the height of the Budget debate.
FALSEHOOD NO. 4: SUBMISSION OF THE BUDGET TWO
MONTHS INTO THE FISCAL YEAR.
Again, if you don’t know, the Liberian fiscal
year spans July 1 and June 30. The Fiscal 2006/07 Budget
was submitted to the Legislature on June 29, 2006, before
the start of the fiscal year on July 1, and not two
months into the fiscal year, as you allege. So, Mr.
Editor, where is your regard for facts and fairness?
The fact of the matter is that the Budget was passed
by the Legislature on August 22, 2006, after hosting
nearly two months of hearings on the Budget. Under normal
circumstances, it is obvious that the budget should
have been submitted to the Legislature earlier than
June 29, 2006. In fact, the earlier timeline targeted
by the Bureau for budget submission to the Legislature
was May 20, 2006, and the deadline for the receipt of
budget proposals from ministries and spending entities
(a very critical input in the budget process) was April
7, 2006.
However, because of a host of reasons, not the least
of which was serious capacity problems inherited by
this government at various government ministries and
institutions, most ministries and agencies were unable
to meet the April 7, 2006 deadline. The truth is that
most of the ministries including a very important branch
of government actually submitted their budget proposals
at the end of May 2006. Obviously, this put our timeline
out of whack. Nonetheless, we were able to submit the
budget before the start of the budget year, a marked
improvement over the past when it was a common occurrence
for budgets to be submitted to the Legislature between
two-three months into the fiscal year. It is noteworthy
to inform you, Mr. Editor, that because of the availability
of time, activities leading to the formulation of the
2007/08 Budget started in November 2006 and the Budget
will be submitted to the Legislature on May 15, 2007.
Mr. Editor, I could go on to catalogue other falsehoods
in your two-paragraph assessment, but I think I should
stop here for now. But I will just want to draw your
attention to the fundamental rule of logic. Sound conclusions
are based on sound premises. If the premise is faulty
and factually flawed, as your assessment is, the conclusion,
in this case your grading, is also flawed and cannot
hold water. Apparently, you committed the logical fallacy
of starting with a conclusion and then tried to find
facts that will feed into your pre-conceived conclusion.
So when you could not find the facts to feed your warped
conclusion, you then decided to invent them, a remarkable
feat of creativity which could qualify you as a good
fiction writer.
By the way, Mr. Editor, I teach senior level Accounting
at the University of Liberia, and I also give “D’s”
to some of my students whose performances during the
semester leave much to be desired. But I don’t
just go about giving grades based on how I feel about
a particular student, for to do so is to commit a grievous
crime against the ethics of teaching and to prove that
I am not worth my salt as an Instructor. I use objective
criteria such as quizzes, midterms, final exams, class
participations, group assignments, individual assignments,
etc to derive a particular student’s grade. Mr.
Editor, I am told that Journalism also has ethics.
Finally, Mr. Editor, please remember that “I
disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to my
death your right to say it.” Happy New Year!
