TODAY, at twenty-eight years of unbroken existence, we bow first in gratitude to God Almighty, and then to the readers, business partners and well-wishers who have carried THE ANALYST from a hunted upstart in 1998 to the seasoned watchdog that greets this anniversary. We observe our natal day quietly and soberly — with reflection on a checkered past, a steady eye on the national present, and firm resolve for the road ahead.
WHEN WE last marked a milestone, the nation stood on the eve of an election whose fairness many doubted, and whose conduct, for the first time in three decades, rested wholly in Liberian hands. That test has since been met. The 2023 polls were held, the verdict accepted, and power passed from one administration to another without the guns and the foreign boots that once shadowed our politics. What we then offered as a fragile hope, we now record as settled history: Liberia governed its own succession and did not stumble. It is a credential our region may envy, and we do not hold it lightly.
WE EXTEND, on this day, a hand of understanding and cooperation to the administration of President Joseph Nyuma Boakai and Vice President Jeremiah Koung, two-and-a-half years into their stewardship. We do so with the caveat that has governed our dealings with every government we have outlived: that we will not budge an inch from the promises of democracy, the principles of good governance, and the rule of law. Cooperation, for THE ANALYST, has never meant applause on demand. It means holding the powerful to the standards they set for themselves, and reminding the citizen of the duties a republic asks of him.
WE ARE NOT strangers to adversity, and we say so not in bitterness but in testimony. Our offices were shut without warrant; our equipment was seized; our staff, the publisher among them, were herded into common cells on mere suspicion. We were branded agents provocateurs, enemies of the state, rebel accomplices. We knew no despair then, and we will know none now. The men who once tried to strangle this newspaper have passed from the stage; THE ANALYST remains, and it remains itself.
WE RECOGNIZE, too, that freedoms won on paper must be defended in practice. The decriminalization of free speech and the citizen’s right to public information were hard-fought gains, and no administration should imagine that our gratitude for them purchases our silence on anything else. The nation now watches an accountability project of historic weight — the long-deferred reckoning with the crimes of the war years and with the corruption that has hollowed public trust. THE ANALYST will follow that work to its conclusion, and judge it not by the eloquence of its launching but by the courage of its follow-through.
WE ACKNOWLEDGE the gracious partnership we have kept with the Liberian people — their trust in our judgment and their patience with our counsel — without which we would long ago have joined the many titles that flashed briefly on the horizon and withered. To our readers, our vendors and our advertisers: you fastened the buckles that kept us on the newsstand in the lean years, and you have our gratitude and our renewed covenant. We remain, as we were born to be, the voice of the ordinary Liberian and, we hope, a paragon of professionalism and balance.
WE SHALL remain steadfast, resolute and ever vigilant in pursuit of our professional duties and our national responsibility. We will analyze the issues and leave the judgment to our people. We will not be anyone’s lackey, nor anyone’s sworn adversary. This is the vocation for which we were born, and for which, in darker times, we were bruised and very nearly broken.
Long live THE ANALYST! Long live Liberia!
Happy Anniversary to us.