EDITORIAL: Hoping UP Government Would Do Better this Year

THE UNITY PARTY administration, considering its campaign promises and anti-CDC propaganda for six years and as specifically intensified during the 2023 elections, was found wanting in many or all respects during its first year (2024). Cleverly called the Rescue Train during the elections, the Unity Party Alliance and its standard-bearer hyped captivating promises that painted an Elysian Fields of Liberia that seemingly resonated with the populace such that, despite the relative impressive strides by the Coalition for Democratic Change government, the electorate turned a blind ear and eye to the minimum progress and voted in the Alliance. After 12 long months, and after exhausting over US$700 million of state funds in addition to millions of dollars of foreign aid, Liberians and their international partners are asking a litany of mindboggling questions.

HERE ARE SOME of the concerns: What has changed in the country since the UP rule that is different, or looks better than, what the CDC government did? Is the drug pandemic over? Isn’t the number of Liberians abusing KUSH and other illicit drugs and substances increased? Aren’t unexplained deaths, disappearances and crimes still the order of the day? Haven’t the public seen waves of political patronages all over the place, sacking of public servants, including tenured officials? Hasn’t the rule of law trampled upon with unusually unbridled temper?

INDEPENDENT ANSWERS TO those questions would amount to one fact: that under the UP rule of the last one year, the excesses of political governance in Liberia were crudely maximized, reaching their zenith. The drug fight virtually failed, evidenced that the fact that President Boakai was compelled to declare the evolving situation under his regime a “national emergency”. Mysterious deaths of citizens as well as aliens, violent crimes, including state-sponsored torture, cracked down on the rights of citizens were at their apex. Corruption, ranging from unexplained wealth, recklessly displayed opulence to reports of procurement frauds as was the case with the yellow machines and Ghana buses fiascos, excelled to epidemic proportion.

IN A SENSE, “BUSINESS AS USUAL” – in sum a political rule wallowing in rampant decadence and disorder – which the Unity Party and its Political Leader Boakai had promised to end upon the takeover of power has blossomed under their watch with reckless abandon. Consequently, throughout the year, Liberia was in free fall. Like sheep without a shepherd, the people submerged in a rule of chaos and insecurity. Liberians bore and carried pains and sorrows, disenchantments in their hearts with no authority available to hear them let alone nurse and remedy the plights. 2024, essentially, was a year akin to the war years – no justice for the afflicted, no recognizable development from state revenues accrued, with the citizenry hopeless, as if those who are leading were not accountable to them.

INSTEAD OF THE Government to use propaganda, which was its conveyor belt to power, to justify a glaring failure, it is time to reset, recalibrate and sensibly organize for 2025 and henceforth.

DURING THE ELECTION year (2023), the people of Liberia did not have the prophetic eyes to see a colossal failure in wait but now, as sun is dawn on history, they have the natural eyes to see and grade what was done or was not done in broad-day light and in tangible terms. It would therefore be folly and suicidal to think any amount of rhetoric and propaganda can mask and cover up such a heap of glaring political failures they experienced.

THUS, THE BEST thing to do at this time, in this year, is to recognize and accept the missteps, admit all the letdowns, regard 2024 an irrational and euphoric beginning, and use the 338 days left in 2025 to plan properly and proceed rationally. That will be the sager thing to do than to fake and grandstand on the first-year stewardship which the market women in Duala themselves know to be a grand failure.

WHETHER THE RULING Unity Party Alliance – or is it now barely Unity Party? – sees it the way, we and perhaps most Liberians, see it and know, 2025 will be a year of reckoning. On the one hand, politicians and activists who had allowed 2024 to slip without their normal combative and agitative overtures because in their words “We are giving the UP one free year of cooling off and to prove itself worthy” will certainly get into action this year. On the other hand, the silent majority who are the decider of political power in this country, may not let anything less. They are hopeful this year will be better as not to crystallize their doubts, annoyance and despair which are often the compost that provokes their ire and that leads to rebellion at the ballot box.

HISTORY LEAVES US with ample evidence that the third and fourth years of governance, in this case for UP 2026 & 2027, are not guaranteed, when angers and disappointments become irresistibly solid and no amount of change matters to the people anymore. All this is why – and because the long backward people of this country deserve it – we express the hope that the UP administration will make a 360-decree turnaround and rule better in 2025 than it did in 2024.