PROMINENT LIBERIAN LAWYER Tiawan Saye Gongloe has raised a series of questions he was quick to call “not rhetorical” – questions every well-meaning Liberian must ponder over because they provoke stark wakeup calls that plow deep into the very conscience of the nation and people. Speaking to various groups of Liberian unionists on Friday, the former Labor Minister and former presidential candidate said something serious and appalling has happened to the psyche and morals of Liberians—ordinary citizens and ruling class alike—who, as Jesus Christ would put, “call evil good and call good evil”.
IN A PARALLELISM MOOD, the renowned lawyer and politician, during the oration, kept asking his audience and by extension Liberians: “What’s kind of country is this?”—an interrogation of the soul and mind of a people who have chosen time after time to indulge in acts and mentalities that are mediocre, corrupt and irrational, contributing to the social, economic and political debauchery and backwardness of the nation.
FOR INSTANCE, GONGLOE asked: “What kind of country is this, where honest, hardworking union and community leaders as well as public servants—those who serve with integrity—are shunned, ridiculed, and ostracized? Where is the respect for integrity? Where is the admiration for honesty? Where is the pride in choosing the difficult, righteous path over the easy, corrupt one?
WHAT KIND OF country is this where government officials act as though they are helpless bystanders to the very problems they were elected to solve? These officials, who have been entrusted with the highest responsibilities, speak as if they are powerless. Instead of acting like leaders, they behave like opposition figures or civil society activists.”
HE ALSO QUIPPED: “What kind of country is this where former opposition leaders, once loud critics of government corruption now defend the very practices they once condemned? These leaders once spoke out passionately about the need for change, about justice, about accountability. And yet, once in power, they become the same defenders of the status quo they once advocated against. What kind of country is this?
“WHAT KIND OF country is this where wage disparities are so glaring that it would take a teacher, law enforcement officer, or nurse at least five years to earn what some government officials make in a single month? What kind of country is this, where we tolerate poverty, hopelessness, and mass anger among our own people? Our young men and women, driven to despair, fall victim to human trafficking, risking their lives for a chance at dignity. Some die in the Sahara Desert, chasing a glimmer of hope. Aye, God! What kind of country is this?”
THE GONGLOE LAMENTATIONS are not mere politics, propaganda or incitement—they bring out social, economic and political realities that Liberians have lived with, tolerated, nurtured and sustained despite the misery the people endure. Even right now, despite purported revolutionary actions launched in the past, including but not limited to the 1980 coup, the so-called popular people’s uprising, post-conflict democratic transitions, and all the failed promises by politicians, nothing has changed in the country, not even the very psyche and moral decadence that have given patronage to the nemeses afflicting the country and the people behaviors. Right now, political parties, tribes, regions and provinces continue to own and celebrate scoundrels, economic vampires ruining the nation’s socioeconomic health and growth.
WE JOIN GONGLOE to ask, what kind of country is this where victims of corruption accept their condition willingly and gladly live with conditions of squalor once their political and ethnic kin and kith are the pillagers of the nation and their lives. What a strange country and people? What a tragedy of ballistic proportion Liberia is faced with? Is it a providential curse and mere stupidity that has got us here—177-year republic wallowing in the abyss of imprudence, misery, poverty and absolute decadence? When will the successive waves of political failure end so that the says a goodbye to the “politics of attribution” — a kind of “you stole during your regime, it’s our time to steal” vicious cycle that we as a country are locked into from time immemorial?
WE AGREE WITH Gongloe because nothing has changed. And if there anything at all that has changed from one ruling government to another, it is the scale of corruption and failure in ascensional order.
SHOULD LIBERIANS GIVE UP—fold their hands unable to do something so that the circus of corruption, broken promises and willful neglect of the people continue unabated?
THE ANSWER IS a big NO! As Gongloe put it, a better Liberia is possible, but it will not come by waiting. We agree with him, “It will come by action. It will come when we change the mindset that government is a business venture and that corruption is acceptable. It will come when we stop making excuses for dishonesty and start holding each other accountable. Together, we must sweep corruption from the government of Liberia.” We need a 100 degree turn around, a social baptism, from the decadent psyche that gives fertility to political failure and change.