EDITORIAL: Our 2025 Salutations to Liberians and Foreign Partners

UNIVERSALLY, THE DAWN of a fresh new year is a source of immense joy for everyone. Certainly, for Liberians, crossing over from 2024 to 2025 is a memorable journey for which all have reason to celebrate. For us Liberians, it was a period we dreamed and prophesized would turn our hopes into reality, bring the desired and promised change, and set the country on the steady course of good governance, peace, unity and reconciliation. In fact, it would not be a mistake to note that there were some citizens, and foreigners within our borders, who thought the business as usual would be no more, and democratic culture hatched since the end of the civil conflict would blossom. All this because 2024 saw the rise of a new political darling dressed in apparels of promises for change and noblier heights for the country and its people after the elections of 2023.

ELECTIONS ARE GOOD, a fine recipe of democracy and freedom but a very divisive, chaos-prone exercise. Most countries that are torn by crises today–whether they are on edge expecting the outburst of conflict anytime, or already embroiled in civil war, or are now presided over by military junta following a coup, found their respective troubles from holding elections. Liberia’s own civil war had its origin in a chain of crises that evolved after the holding of elections in 1985, when opposition charged the ruling party of stealing the elections. Both the egos of the opposition and the ruling establishment clashed, triggering national events that finally matured into the bloody 14 years of war.

THAT IS WHY when the 2023 elections were emerging on the national calendar, fears seethed and soared, prophesy foretold, and dooms predicted. With Providence’s eyes on the country, and citizens and foreigners alike demonstrating high sense of civility, the clouds of doom dispersed into the generally peaceful and fair elections celebrated by both the ruling administration and its supporters and the opposition community. With isolated cases of violence, the country survived, its fledgling democracy grew new features of maturity, and the people sighed huge relief.

QUIETLY, PEACEFULLY AND celebratorily, the country moved onto 2024 with high hopes, having averted the perceived and/or real horror possibility. Liberians deserve commendation. And throughout that year, the ordinary people of Liberia, the impoverished majority of Liberians, fondly called “the masses of our people” by politicians, upheld the torch of peace during the year. The Analyst says, “kudos!” to the masses. You are often the victim of political misrule, often cited by political activists and “freedom fighters” as the cause of their struggles but often left as jetsam and flotsam. You mustered the courage in 2024 to remain peaceful despite the clear, glaring excesses and failure by the political establishment during the year. Entering 2025, we look up to you to continue to temper your expectation for “rescue” with a sense of caution, asking the critical questions but remaining mindful that Rome was not built in one day.

TO YOU THE opposition politician, all and sundry officials and stalwarts of opposition parties, we commend you so much for being so patriotic and so democratically mature. We largely owe you credit to beating your swords into ploughshares in the face of provocations, political failures and missteps by the ruling party.  Continue to exercise maturity. We urge you to keep on being constructive in your engagements. We have no doubt you will do so because all hopes are that you could bounce back, for you are a ruling party on the substitute bench. But let it be known that it is only possible in the face of peace and stability, which cannot be obtained and sustained without your direct support as you are possibly the biggest opposition in the next six years. Keep your calm. The best could come your way again.

TO THE UP administration, we salute you on the occasion of one year anniversary. We remember the Unity Party had 12 years before, drifted to opposition life and was back to ruling establishment status. There are those who say you shot your way back to power on the platter of lies, evil propaganda and deception. For us, we think that that was better than shooting your way back to power with the barrel of gun. You were peaceful for 12 years in opposition.

BACK TO POWER, and how clocking one year, much is desired of you. Your first near did not prove much that you were ready when you took over, because things you could have done to keep this nation peaceful and reconciled remained aloof. That could have been that the CDC unarguably raised the governance bar when it comes to tolerance, media freedom and free speech. The bar was apparently relatively high for you to satisfy in one year. The point is, you can also be, for you have nothing to lose in laboring to measure up to that bar. There is no better way to sustain the nation’s peace and stability than rethinking our approaches to leadership—to governance.

ANOTHER CHALLENGE IS to keep your promise to the people. Clearly, in the first year, you falter. Your ending ‘business as usual’ promise did not measure up. Let’s remind you that keeping your promises is necessary not only to make you keep your jobs; it also helps averts possible national crises in agitation and insurrection from a people who may be tired with lies and cheats. Where there are challenges difficult to surmount, use public engagement tactics via effective communication and public relations to disabuse the people. And don’t forget, you were voted to deliver on promises, and not to make excuses. The problem with is country is that politicians, political regimes, consistently fail to keep their promises. They make elections as a vicious cycle whereby one corrupt and non-performing regime is removed for another. Howbeit, it is not late, you can still cut the corner, you can break that cycle and end it.

TO OUR INTERNATIONAL partners and foreign friends, we hail you. Some of you have been with us for countless decades and still in-country. We appreciate your support in 2024, and we know in part you wanted to access what our new government would do. We welcome the expressed willingness of some to continue to assist. Our plea to you is this: eschew political interferences, and biases in dealing with groups in this country. Some of you are the cause of our domestic disharmony and underdevelopment. You cherry-pick depending on which regime or which face of Liberian is on the presidential throne. You at times become hypocritical. What we ask going forward is for you to leverage your support looking at Liberia and not a particular group of Liberians. Let your target be the ordinary people, their felt needs. Another thing before we forget: reduce your radical austerity regime. Nowadays some of your benchmarks and preconditions for assistance are like asking one to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. We need you all but stop the heaven-must-come-down prescriptions.

INDEED, 2025 COULD be a new beginning, if we all play our part sincerely, respecting each other’s roles and moved with a sense of urgency for genuine and thought-through transformation.

OUR HEARTFELT SALUTATIONS!!

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