The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
January 6, 2020

Passing on the corruption legacy

George Weah is an ineffective and incompetent president who surrounded himself with a network of sycophants and unpatriotic double-dealing traitors that are looting the Liberian treasury for their personal gain while enabling poverty to remain rampant and unbridled corruption ruthlessly stains the daily lives of Liberians. Over the past two years, President George Weah has failed to accumulate material economic gains of Liberia’s abundant natural resources, favorable climate to ensure food security and a vibrant youthful workforce to boost sustainable growth and socio-economic development. Liberians are fast coming to realize that the footprint of the George Weah administration is one of a sordid presidency that has made Liberia a laughing stock and failure. The George Weah Presidency is like a deer caught in the headlights a brakeless dump truck loaded with explosives traveling down a darkened hill on the Gbarnga-Voinjama highway towards a heavily populated village market without a horn to caution marketers of the approaching danger. Since becoming president, George Weah has staggered from disaster to disaster, fumbling all over the country’s public spaces, with his words becoming empty promises that have now reached the peak of national disappointment and disillusionment. As a result, the vast majority of Liberians still lives in the most horrid socioeconomic conditions in extreme poverty surviving on less than$2 per day; while over 64% of the children remain malnourished as the average life expectancy stand between 54 and 60 years, while child and maternal deaths linger tremendously high throughout the heartland.    

President George Weah has brought misery and hardships to Liberia since taking office in 2018. This clueless period in Liberia’s history has placed the character of the country at the peril of devastation caused by poor governance; endemic corruption and gross mismanagement resulting in dire socioeconomic conditions. The Liberian economy under George Weah has gradually been collapsing with living conditions worsening due to incompetence, naiveté, treachery, recklessness, corruption, and mismanagement. These conditions have superimposed socioeconomic disabilities upon the Liberian people, preventing upward mobility due to the lack of sustainable growth and blatant refutation of livelihood improvement to upgrade wellbeing and boost social change. President George Weah has been governing Liberia as though the country is his privately-owned investment holding company or personal farm. He has become a megalomaniac narcissist that has miserably failed to effectively deal with the ever-present dilemma of underdevelopment, unemployment, unskilled workforce, food insecurity, resource mismanagement, community retrenchment, social exclusion, weak healthcare and educational systems. President Weah and his misguided and unpatriotic squad of double-dealing traitors live lavishly by using the country’s treasury to control institutions and exploit the Liberian people to support their reckless lifestyles and expensive tastes for luxurious automobiles, first-class travels, charter Gulfstream jets and construction of luxurious apartments in conjunction with useless display of Ferragamo shoes, Valentino and Yves Saint Lauren clothing to impress a blameless populace.     

Between 2005 and 2017, George Weah, the international football superstar celebrity along with cohort activists who sought to influence sociopolitical change formed a social movement that became a political party called the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC). The movement effectively used Liberia’s legacy bogeyman argument of privilege, favoritism and preferential treatment of the traditional ruling class to generate enormous support amongst the country’s huge idle and socially excluded youthful population to publically prosecute the opposition on charges of being besieged by the legacy socioeconomic advantage of privilege that incited the 1979 rice riot, the 1980 coup d'état, and the 1989-2003 bloody civil wars. These legacy bogeyman arguments allowed the CDC to take advantage of Liberia’s traditional socioeconomic conflict of neglected, excluded and disadvantaged segments of the population to rightfully demand fairness, equal opportunity and unbiased participation in the distribution of the national goods and services to boost change. However, after two years of the George Weah Presidency, the vast majority of these Liberians has given up hope and is fast abandoning their aspiration that President George Weah can ever develop requisite pathways to boost sustainable growth, improve wellbeing and lift them out of poverty.

These vital population groups of young people, market-women, street vendors, day traders, smallholder farmers and the working poor are realizing the widespread incompetence and extensive scale of unashamed corruption and gross mismanagement of institutions and resources by President George Weah. These groups are breaking away from President George Weah in search of progressive alternatives for inclusive socio-economic growth, productive skill development, livelihood improvement, essential service delivery, better healthcare and education to build capacity in order to contribute their fair share towards sustainable growth and development. Liberians are not knuckling under or succumbing to the gross failure of the George Weah presidency any longer. The CDC’s support base is splintering and cracking. They are running for cover because the country’s post-conflict democratic institutions and civil society groups are been penetrated by unpatriotic traitors through inducements, kickbacks and jobs that they cannot fully perform.

Liberians everywhere need to wake-up and peacefully express their displeasure with George Weah’s performance. The president’s inexperience, incompetence, recklessness, corruption, mismanagement, and exploitation of socioeconomic grievances are taken their toll on the country. Rather than endeavor to sustainably and inclusively transform the Liberian economy, President George Weah has channeled his limited energies in governance towards intimidating various sectors of the population. President George Weah is running a pay-to-play theft ring by systematically plundering and looting the national treasury to increase his personal wealth. Staying in power seems to be President George Weah’s sole ambition, as he continues to be protected and celebrated by a small circle of unpatriotic double-dealing traitors; while the vast majority of Liberians mercilessly suffer in abject poverty with impunity.

The George Weah Presidency will leave a lasting black mark on the Liberian nation-state.  Therefore, when President Weah leaves office, it would be fair for indictments and arrest warrants to be issued against him and his unpatriotic squad of eccentric traitor to face criminal prosecutions on charges for corruption, embezzlement, money laundering, and racketeering. These charges should also include the missing 16 billion Liberian dollars and the US$25 million mop-up exercise money. Additionally, George Weah should be stripped of presidential immunity for crimes against the Liberian nation-state and people.  

Be a Liberian not because you were born in Liberia but because Liberia was born in you

– fnyepon@aol.com – 

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