By Rep. Musa Hassan Bility
I am sitting in Saclepea this morning, not because the town is quiet, but because my mind is not. The year is ending, and I can hear Liberia in my thoughts the way you hear rain on a zinc roof. You can pretend you do not hear it, but you still hear it.
A year like this one does not pass gently. It passes like a complex argument inside a family, loud, emotional, sometimes unfair, sometimes necessary, and always revealing.
This year, our politics continued to teach us what we already know, but refuse to admit: that noise is not progress, and numbers are not development. We argued about budgets as if they were trophies, when they should be mirrors. A mirror that shows what kind of people we are, what kind of leaders we have become, and what kind of country we are willing to tolerate. Too often, the mirror showed us the same old face: spending without seriousness, promises without a plan, and institutions that bend when they should stand.
We watched governance become performance. We watched big announcements come and go, and at the end of the day, the market woman still counted her losses, the student still counted his disappointments, and the young man still counted his years without opportunity. We watched the public mood swing between hope and exhaustion. The people did not stop believing in Liberia, but many stopped believing in the routine ways Liberia has been governed.
And through it all, I kept writing.
I wrote because silence is also a vote.
I wrote because when leadership becomes comfortable with confusion, somebody must insist on clarity.
I wrote because our country is not short of resources; it is short of discipline and decision-making.
I wrote because the greatest danger to Liberia is not our hardship, it is our acceptance of hardship as normal.
In my writings this year, one theme kept returning like a stubborn truth: the need for new thinking. Not a new slogan. Not a new set of faces repeating old habits. A new thinking that is allergic to impunity, serious about accountability, and obsessed with measurable results. A new thinking that refuses to treat public office as a reward, and treats it as a duty.
The ups of this year were not always loud, but they were real. We saw citizens speak more boldly. We saw young people demand more than entertainment politics. We saw communities organize, question, and challenge. We saw the idea grow that Liberia can be better, not by magic, but by method.
The downs were also real. The economy stayed tight for ordinary people. Trust remained fragile.
National conversations sometimes became tribal, bitter, and too personal, as if disagreement must turn into hatred. Too many of our people lived one sickness away from poverty, one school fee away from frustration, one police encounter away from humiliation.
So what do we do with a year like this?
We do not romanticize it. We learn from it.
As 2026 approaches, I am not wishing for a “better year” the way people wish for good weather. I am calling for a more engaging year, a more active year, and a more demanding year. A year where citizens become participants, not spectators. A year where leaders are pressured to produce, not perform.
Here is what I want the New Year to mean for us:
1. A year of seriousness
Less ceremony. More work. Less press conference. More policy. Less excuse. More delivery.
2. A year of constitutional order and institutional respect.
The rules must matter again. The procedures must mean something again. If we normalize shortcuts, we will normalize chaos.
3. A year of economic patriotism
Liberia must stop being a place where others benefit most from what belongs to us. Opportunity must be designed so Liberians can truly rise, compete, own, and build.
4. A year of honesty in leadership
Not perfection, but honesty. Tell the people the truth. Tell them what can be done now, what must take time, and what has failed and why. Leadership without truth is manipulation.
5. A year of national unity with backbone
Unity does not mean silence in the face of wrong. Unity means we can fight for Liberia without fighting each other.
This morning in Saclepea, the air feels familiar, the ground feels honest, and the memories feel close. But I am thinking about Liberia the same way I always do, because Liberia is home, and home is where your heart refuses to rest.
If 2025 taught us anything, it taught us this: a country does not change because time passes. A country changes because people decide to change it.
Let 2026 be the year we decide.