EDITORIAL: Let New GoL Match Exuberance for Change with Respect for Rule of Law

IT LOOKS LIKE President Joseph Nyuma Boakai and his ruling Unity Party are on fire for rapid, radical transformation and, and towards this end, they have embarked upon multiple fronts of a struggle at the same time. Why hurrying to set into motion the long popularly desired War and Economic Crimes Court, the Boakai administration is throwing its dragnet at suspected corrupt officials, pulling down undesirable officials and replacing them with favorable apologists perhaps sufficiently programmed to prosecute the government’s professed progressive, transformational regime.

AT FIRST GLANCE, the robust posturing of the government appears like a determined and measured attempt to tackle the country’s most intractable nemeses – willful corruption, entrenched impunity and terribly bad governance – with a force that is proportional and even more lethal to the magnitude of the problems on hand. True, impunity, corruption, graft and political recklessness have been the order of the day, and there has a popular outcry as well as the call to action. And it is true also that, over the years, political administrations after the other have fantasized, romanticized and rhetoricized with their approaches to tackle those nemeses. Thus, as the Boakai administration steps up its game towards what appears to be a serious move to cut the corner, many are cheering and condoning its actions.

A SECOND GLANCE or deeper look beneath the “radical actions” by the Boakai administration however finds something else—something weird, appalling, ultra vires and unacceptable: the rule of law, even the sanctity of the Liberian Constitution, is being crushed, torn up in pieces, defiled and downplayed. And what is more frightening about this spectacle is not only the wailing of victims, the outcries of civil society, and the emerging reactive stampedes by the opposition; it is also the steady rise of political arrogancy and tyranny—all of which if allowed to merge have the potential to form the lava of a national volcano that is likely to explode anytime.

LEST WE ARE misunderstood or misinterpreted as being struck in the past, condoning and fanning the flames of corruption and impunity, let’s once again state that there is nothing wrong with prosecuting corrupt officials, even if they be former or current officials. By hundred percent, we support a vigorous fight against corruption which is so endemic that it constitutes the near-invincible enemy and foremost cancer eating the fabric of our body politic. In fact, all the lamentations of “witch-hunt” and calls for national peace and reconciliation at the expense of accountability and good governance don’t resonate with us. Like all other well-meaning citizens, we want justice, we want accountability, we want an uncompromising war against corruption, that “public enemy number one” as former President Sirleaf used to say.

HOWEVER, THERE IS something else that we condemn, that we don’t want. We don’t want the Boakai government – or any government now and in the future – to professed begin prosecuting the war on impunity, corruption and all other crimes at the expense of the rule of law; in contravention of and in trampling upon the Constitution of this country, something that is showing face all over the place right now.

IN A DEMOCRACY, the pursuit of any national objective must be grounded in an unshakable respect for and adherence to good governance practices and precepts firmly articulated by the rule of law. As Meles Zenawi, former President of Ethiopia put it, “The rule of law is the basis for any democracy. And without the rule of law in democracy, you have chaos.”

LET US THEREFORE state unequivocally that President Boakai’s continual fragrant disregard for the rule of law—flouting legislations protecting tenured officials, removing them and replacing them arbitrarily; for appointing ‘acting officials’ almost permanently without legislative approbation that comes with confirmation of appointed officials; for rounding up accused persons without arraigning them according to established judicial procedures, sinisterly sending them to jail without jury indictment, and weaponizing legal bond processes—is condemnable. It is a recipe for ungovernability.

WHILE LIBERIA MAY not be a model for good governance, our governance system espouses established laws, best practices and procedures that are sufficient and credible not only to embark upon any form of critical reform and transformation, but also to uphold the state from relapse into the dark days of chaos and disorder. To ignore these civilized precepts as the Boakai administration is doing, pursuing goals that only appeal to egos or selfish ends, is totally unacceptable and must stop.

IN SHORT, WE say to President Boakai and his government: fight corruption. Fight graft. Dismiss and appoint officials. But do so within the ambit of the Constitution and all other laws of Liberia. Or take responsibility for eventualities that might attend the torpedoing of the law by you.