Backlog of Special Committees' Reports : •  From Freeport Recommendations to Kendeja Crisis •  Clogging Findings & Recommendations Still On Shelf

The Liberian political class is characteristically notorious for camouflaging, if not concealing, and evading critical findings of controversial crises to which the Liberian public has had great interests and stakes. From this report of Reporter J. Dominic Farley , it seems the Sirleaf government is not showing any unlikelihood of the trait, as there hangs an excess baggage of findings and recommendations of empanelled special committees of critical crises burning to the hearts of the public.

There are but three important cases of clogging investigations or their findings that tell nearly so clearly that the Sirleaf administration, despite its professed fundamental break with the debauched political system of the past, is nevertheless akin to nearly all its predecessors regarding the Liberian political class' approach to serious crises and/or the evasion of investigative findings of those crises.

The three typical cases include an important element of recommendations made by the Presidential Security Advisor, H. Boima Fahnbulleh-led committee which investigated the Freeport bedlam, the Togba-Nah Tipoteh Price Committee and the Augustine Toe-headed Kendejah Crisis Committee.

The findings or recommendations of these three committees, in addition to others set up by the Sirleaf administration, are either on the shelf of the Executive Mansion or some of their recommendations are rubbished or shoved under the carpet.

The Freeport Committee, headed by Fahnbullah, was charged with the responsibility to investigate hours of bloodletting at the Freeport of Monrovia involving the Port's police and the Liberia National Police; a bloodletting that left scores of fatalities and disrupted the peace.

The Committee did make its reports in less than a month, but its findings and recommendations, though made public, were fanned out and selectively acted upon leaving bigger culprits off the hook.

Prominent amongst the recommendations was punitive action against the Inspector General of the National Police, Beatrice Munah Sieh. Specifically, the Committee recommended that Sieh should be dismissed.

Though other recommendations regarding punitive action against junior officers of the Freeport police were upheld by the President, Sieh's sentence was commuted to academic leave; a leave that the Police Director hardly heeded.

The second landmark crisis investigation was placed on the shoulders of Togba-Nah Tipoteh and three other prominent Liberians requested to probe into causes of spiraling prices of essential commodities in the country.

President Sirleaf's setting up of the committee, coupled with its human resource composition, was generally a source of consolation not only because the prevailing hardship bordering price hikes was deepening the social and economic conditions of the people of Liberia , but also because those entrusted with the solution-finding task were amongst Liberia 's best brains.

But it was not long when lamentations from the committee regarding poor or no funding began to derail public expectation and delight.

For nearly three months, probably with or without the appropriate funding, the Tipoteh Committee made its report to the President.

Since the report, considered interim, the public continues to grub in the dark to figure out what might have been contained in the report, which they believe holds the panaceas to their economic and social woes.

Public anxiety for the hidden findings of the Price Committee comes from the understandable backdrop of asphyxiating economic hardship particularly attributable to galloping hikes of prices.

The third clogged report is about what is now known to be the Kendeja Crisis

Gradually, dust is settling following the appointment of a presidential committee by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to probe and excavate hidden issues that prompted students from Kendeja Culture Center to set up roadblocks on the Monrovia-Roberts Field highway in April.

Already, shrapnel from the controversial Kendeja crisis has hit an Assistant Minister from the Ministry of Information, Culture & Tourism, Jailee Quiee, sending him home to play idle games with his family.

Probably due to the gravity or trickiness of the crisis, the former Assistant Information Minister was dismissed by President Sirleaf even before she appointed a committee headed by Catholic Justice and Peace Commission Director Augustine Toe to find out the actuality of the fact.

Without stating clearly what “fish” the dismissed Minister had “to fry” in the Kendeja crisis, she said she was misled by the Information Ministry on the renovation of a building intended for use by students from Kendeja Culture Center following their eviction by the government through the Information Ministry from their original school to give way for the construction of a 4-Star hotel by American Billionaire Bob Johnson.

Irregularities marring the relocation of the students generated anger amongst the students who set roadblocks for hours demanding Information Minister Lawrence Bropleh to give reason for the delay and poor quality of job done on the renovated building.

The students' stampede apparently claimed the President's attention prompting the visit to the then troubled spot to acquaint herself with the situation.

Before she arrived at the site, several students were already arrested and taken to the Police Headquarters by UNMIL and State police officers who virtually militarized the Kendeja community.

After addressing the aggrieved students, President Sirleaf then went to the newly renovated building where she expressed disappointment over both the delay and poor quality of materials used for the project.

She ended her tour of the area with threat that heads would roll.

The Information Minister Bropleh in response to the President's threat told journalists that if the President claimed that she was misled, then the contractor refurbishing the school was to blame because it was it that misled him.

Three months rolling on, problems necessitating the probe still lingering, and the Toe Committee is yet to announce completion of its investigation.

Credible information has filtered to the Public Agenda that the committee has since concluded its report awaiting submission to the President, but a fight by some unscrupulous individuals to stroke out the mention of the evaporation of some $20,000 is playing a part.

But with some credible individuals onboard, some sources deduce, it would be difficult for the unscrupulous individuals to penetrate the committee or cause it to succumb to such a temptation.

When contacted, Toe refused to comment on ground that the report has not been submitted to the President. He confirmed that his committee had already completed its task.