EDITORIAL: We Applaud Boakai’s Giving out Performance Contracts, and for Recognizing Best Performing Officials

LAST WEEKEND, PRESIDENT Joseph Nyuma Boakai launched what is called 2025 Performance Management and Compliance System (PMCS) Presidential Contracts and recognized a few public officials or institutions that were considered to have performed well in terms of their fiduciary mandates and responsibilities. Such a move, no doubt, is historic as is significant, in the face of rampant labor theft and under-performance by public officials who don’t see public offices as being personal professional domains that deserve their very best but as “government thing” and treated with the popular cliche, “What those from JJ Roberts time couldn’t do I can kill myself to finish it”. And, over the years, government officials and their staffs use offices for idle chats, facebooking, gossips and other unproductive activities that often make national productivity output barely negligible and ineffectual. Surely, this new effort by the president leaves some measure of enabling impact on the long shameful practice and tendency by public officials and public workers.

WE TAKE NOTE of the remarks made by the president during the occasion of launch of the initiative that was carried out under the theme, “Driving Accountability and Results Across Government,” invariably describing the PMCS as a national turning point from promises to performance, from inputs to impact, and from excuses to excellence. According to him, the PMCS effort is not only a milestone but a message enforcing an end to the era of business-as-usual governance. He also lauded high-performing institutions for meeting and exceeding their 2024–2025 targets, particularly in implementing Service Delivery Charters and strengthening internal systems.

PARTICULARLY WE FEEL encouraged that the president indicated that institutions that have set a new benchmark will be recognized for their commitment to service excellence, and that those that will fail to meet their obligations, despite the fact that the first year was a learning curve, future non-compliance will have consequences — meaning that non-performing entities will be placed under a Presidential Performance Improvement Plan (PPIP) and subjected to structured oversight, including a temporary travel moratorium for persistent under-performance. The president was right when he said rather forcefully: “Our direction is clear. Our tools are in place. Our expectations are non-negotiable,” promising that both scheduled and surprised institutional visits to assess progress firsthand will be the order of the day going forward.”

NO DOUBTS, THE Performance Management and Compliance System (PMCS) Presidential Contracts is a game-changer that was long overlooked by past governments. Outputs or productivity, whether in the public or private sector, don’t come easy; they are a result of intentional sacrifice, organization, commitment to duty and to institution – something that folks in government characteristically take for granted. Times without number, public officials are seeing leaving their desks with reckless abandon; some chasing everywhere the reigning president sits and goes, attending every inconsequential international forum, entertaining long, meaningless conversations and visits, and just playing negligence because the popular view is and has been that, “it is Government job”.

WITH THE PMCS, all these careless, unproductive attitudes on the job in our public bureaucracy will be minimized. It will also set a prism upon competence and professionalism of those who are entrusted with government ministries, agencies and commissions – for the public to see and appreciate the substance and quality of people in government. They will now be compelled to sit behind the desk and think for once, and not Facebook all day long or fly all over the place only to await the month’s end for emoluments.

HAVING SAID ALL that, we want President Boakai to keep up the pace. The scrupulous enforcement of the PMCS is not lying down in the park. Former President Weah attempted, when the UNDP and their hired consultants worked with the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs to cascade the plan. But either the political will was not there, or the former president was amused by folks congregating around him at public functions, at RIA to receive him from, and see him off to, foreign lands, or he could just not stomach seeing his officials being not around him. This temptation still prevails, and it could undercut the laudable PMCS, if Boakai is not careful.

ANOTHER CRITICAL ISSUE of concern is making available the appropriate allotments for public institutions – legitimate allotments necessary for the assignees of Performance Contracts — to meet their set targets. The president needs to know this because one cannot appropriately grade performance except the resources for the execution of those contracts are not delayed or not withheld. This is important because, in this country, we have seen the Finance Ministry, perhaps in collusion with politically influenced powerful regime forces, weaponizing the national budget against colleagues to settle internal political scores. Except the president is guided against all these of these concerns that could militate against the novel PMCS scheme, the president’s objective for this unarguably good initiative would lay waste in the coming months and years.

AGAIN, WE THANK the president for the giant move, and particularly for incentivizing it with public recognition and awards for performing officials and institutions. All these are good, and must be continued unabated.