George Manneh Weah: From the Most Popular to the Most Hated Human Being in Liberia
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
December 28, 2019
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| Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh |
“Generational Traitor,” and “Few Cheers for Weah this Christmas,” reads a sign. “Cluelessness, Incompetence, Mendacity, Scandal, Weah” reads a headline in FrontPageAfrica.
For a guy, Weah, who was celebrated not too long ago as the best thing to ever come out of Liberia since the founding of that football-crazed country to be reduced to a laughingstock less than two years after he became President of Liberia is in itself a laughing matter.
I knew from the beginning that George Manneh Weah wasn’t up to the job as President of Liberia.
He projects weakness, ineptitude, unseriousness, and an unwillingness to learn, listen and bring the best on board to help him run the country, and believes strongly in his thuggish, sycophantic and uncultured partisans to make life and death decisions for the Liberian people.
In fact, I chronicled my thoughts about the future President’s glaring ineptitude, and obvious lack of intellectual power early on in two of my books, and have written consistently from day 1 on this website after Mr. Weah decided to enter politics, that he’s not up to the job.
To my many detractors, my dark opinion of George Weah is close to being a traitor to my Kru ethnicity, since Krao are not supposed to criticize another Krao, especially when the individual is President of Liberia.
I get it!
As a Liberian, my allegiance is to my country and my people, the marginalized suffering population that can hardly find a meal to eat each day and can barely find the money to send their children to school in a country with surplus natural resources.
These are the (Liberian) people, gravely unemployed, of course, who are told to pay fees to use the restrooms in the House of Representatives since water reportedly is scarce and has to be tote from afar.
This is not about a policy but a class system and a clever way to remind unemployed and visiting Liberians to the House of Representatives and the Senate – their constituents, to stay away from their high-end workplace.
You will think that because one of the functions of the House of Representatives is the appropriation of funds to run the country, these individuals will appropriate the money to fund the construction of modern sewers in the entire country.
The question I am sure some of my readers will ask is why blame President Weah for the ridiculous idea of citizens paying to use the restroom in the House of Representatives?
Isn’t Weah the Head of State and leader of the country, who’s supposed to know what’s happening in the country?
Even if he knew about this particular problem in the legislature, this President is incapable of projecting leadership and the strength to ascertain facts to end this foolishness.
Just as it is with other national crisis that shows its head on any given day in the country, it is not in Weah’s (political) DNA to be the kind of leader who is ready to project strength, jump on that crisis, tackle it, and calm the anxiety of a weary nation.
From the missing LD$16b to the ridiculous US $15,000 monthly salaries of legislators, and Jefferson Koiyee’s thuggish behavior, President Weah is absent.
That’s not all.
- Public-sector corruption is rampant and out of control.
- Unemployment is at a record high.
- Crimes including armed robberies are high, and Liberians are not safe in their homes and in the streets.
- Liberians are not getting their remittances when their overseas relatives sent them money.
- Poverty is out of control in George Weah’s Liberia with no end in sight.
- Teachers and healthcare workers and other civil servants have not received their monthly salaries, or are not being paid on time, but President Weah, the ‘Traveler-in-Chief” and his countless partisans and friends can find the money to travel out of the country reportedly in his private jet.
- On October 15, George Weah’s security forces beat unharmed students to the point of bursting their heads and spilling their blood because they stopped his motorcade in solidarity with their teachers who hadn’t been paid their meager monthly salaries.
- After all, these are the same young people who braved Liberia’s rainy seasons and hot temperatures to campaign for him and voted for him overwhelmingly to become the nation’s 25th president.
Making matters even worse is the insensitivity shown by the President’s Minister of Finance and Development, Samuel Tweah, whose response to the salary crisis and the lack of pay in the country reportedly said: “President Weah was not elected to pay people on time.”
So, if President Weah was not elected to pay his poor countrymen and women on time to survive and take care of themselves and their families, why was he elected President, in the first place?
According to Mr. Tweah, the President was elected among other things to “unite the county, develop it, and build roads.”
How silly!
These are the idiots that are ruining the country and running it the reckless way they want to run it without them having to be accountable to the Liberian people.
Did Weah say anything after his Minister of Finance and Development made this insensitive remark?
No.
Just days ago, Mr. Weah’s (CDC) party Chairman Mulbah K. Morlu Jr, took upon himself to verbally strip his President “naked’ publicly for the behind the scene corrupt dealings Weah has engaged in since he became President of Liberia less than two years ago.
Mulbah Morlu’s shameless biblical Saul-like confession for publicly shaming his President and his political party was alcohol. Alcohol and drunkenness made him spill the beans.
If this human being, Morlu, cannot control himself when he’s inebriated, what else can we expect from him the next time he’s drunk?
The absence of effective leadership from President George Manneh Weah has given rise to Henry Costa, Mulbah Morlu and Jefferson Koijee, etc, who are now emboldened to fill the vacuum left by the president.
Poor Liberia!
You are in a mess and my heart is bleeding red blood for you.
We are praying for you.
When will this craziness end?
A million-dollar question.