Corruption Fight Is Unfortunately A Manhunt--and Problematic

THE SIRLEAF-JOHNSON government needs to do much to convince the people of Liberia and the world at large that its fight against corruption and graft is not a malicious attempt to discriminate against and denigrate officials of the erstwhile National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL). The corruption pandemic is not a strange national menace and those who perpetrated it are still around. Officials of various political regimes deemed corrupt and kleptomatic are alive and kicking; some of them serving in the current government. How come, then, the culprits of corruption or economic sabotage are only those who served the NTGL.

THE “REVOLUTIONARIES” OF the 1980 coup not only charged officials of the True Whig Party Government of rampant corruption, they also charged the regime with abuse of power. The intelligentsia of the 1980s who opposed the military junta of Samuel K. Doe wrote countless books and articles in which they told the people of Liberia and the world that the regime was pillaging and misusing public funds. Various transitional regimes which took over from Doe and handed authority to Charles Taylor were variously publicly denounced for economic loot and pillage of the country's resources. The Taylor regime was worst hit not only by the charge of corruption and misuse of public resources but also by a vigorous international campaign to isolate the regime.

THE SIRLEAF-LED government is inundated by former officials, in fact top officials, of the various past administrations regarded or accused of being corrupt. Some of these officials are again serving high profile positions in the current government. Paradoxically, while the clouds of suspicion hang over these officials, they are the same people who are fanning the flames of anti-corruption drive and articulating probity and transparency in the current. What they have done to epitomize the seriousness of their anti-corruption fight is to handpick their counterparts who served in the NTGL.

LEAST WE ARE misunderstood, let's make it crystal clear that we are not opposed to the fight against corruption, including the various litigations already filed against officials of the erstwhile NTGL government. In fact, we support the crusade against corruption and voluntarily enlist ourselves as frontline soldiers. But what bleeds our hearts is the discriminatory--and hypocritical and double-standard--nature of the fight against corruption by the Sirleaf government. What puzzles us is why officials of various other past governments as well as those of the current government also widely deemed corrupt are excluded and pampered away from the dragnet, only a few of the NTGL are targeted to account.

HOW COME THE Sirleaf government has not also dealt into the records of past officials under whom Liberia 's per capita income topped all other nations, except Japan , yet the “masses of our people” were wrecked by poverty, disease and illiteracy? When will litigation come for those who also built mansions with public money and turned them into the private homes that government is today renting? What about the 1979 OAU project scandal? When will officials in charge of the project and suspected of scandal account to the people of Liberia ?

THERE WERE REPORTED pillages of Liberia 's resources between 1980 and 1989, just as it was reported between 1990 and 1997 and between 1997 and 2003. Even in the current government, no day passes without some case of graft and corruption being reported; and the President continues to lament the pervasiveness of the corruption pandemic under her watchful eyes. When will the suspected officials of these regimes, some of whom are advisors and operatives of the current regime, be tested in the court of law to show case why they should not be held for “economic sabotage”?

THE HANDPICKING OF and discrimination against officials of NTGL (2003-2006) to face corruption charges by the Sirleaf government under the pretentious guise of instilling transparency and accountability and meeting some international benchmarks is a sheer selective justice clad with malice and witch-hunt. It is a clear hypocrisy and holds a bleak future for a country just emerging from war.

WE SHOULD NOT forget that the history of our national quagmire is rooted in the deliberate discrimination and persecution of one segment of the population by another. And we should not forget how it has been clear throughout the struggle for national harmony that Providence always takes the side of the oppressed and marginalized. Certainly, a selective fight of corruption is no different from the culture of targeted persecution, a situation that might in the near or far future bring before our doorsteps the vicious cycle of retributive acrimonies so costly to national recovery and developments. Thus, if the Sirleaf government is not ready for a full-scale indiscriminate and all encompassing fight against corruption, let it quit. I hint to a wise, is quite sufficient.