Dismissals At NPA Does Not End The Battle

IT WOULD BE outright folly for anyone or authority to bask in the conviction that the dismissal of top officials at the Free Port of Monrovia remedies chronic grafts, briberies, scavenges and other forms of corruption that have been the source of public alarm and official lamentations over the years. There is no gainsaying of the fact that corruption at the nation's only functional port is endemic, multifaceted and complex as to be countered by a mere dismissals. This is why we agree with a member of the Liberia civil society who believes that success of the war against corruption at the Port is farfetched without prosecutorial efforts to set deterrence.

WE NOTE FOR the record that previous dismissals and personnel realignment has not helped the situation at the Port. Under controversial circumstances, the former Managing Director as well as an expert who was seconded to the Port by the Governance Economic Management Assistance Program (GEMAP) was whisked off from the “Gateway of the Nation's Economy.” Though the removal of these critical actors came when corruption reports were emanating from the Port, the Liberian public was not given the courtesy of details. There was no action whatever. There also was the installation of a new band of managers, including now dismissed Julius J. Gooding, who reports indicated was in the center of corruption allegation; specifically accused of earlier blocking European Union Audit as a middle-level port manager.

TIME OVER TIME, major and petit acts of corruption at the Free Port of Monrovia have been treated with virtual apathy and pampering. And the larger public continues to bear witness to mere expression of grief and disenchantment by the political authority, as if the situation at the Port has got no remedy under the present administration.

THE TRAGEDY IN all this official apathy towards the chronic corruption at the Port is the vexing spillover effort that comes in the form of economic hardship and poverty. And we agree with the deputy executive director of a civil society organization, the Citizens Against Corruption and Abuse of Power (CACAP), George O. Mehn, who says, amongst other things, that rampant corruption at the Port leads to hikes in the prices of imported commodities; a situation that becomes the burden to the ordinary people. This view is supported by President Sirleaf who invariably charges that the Port is fraught with mismanagement and corruption. The only obvious variance in the positions of President Sirleaf and the civil society official is that the former basks in mere dismissal as the only remedy, at least that's what the public has seen during her incumbency, while the latter believes dismissal must be reinforced with prosecution.

WE STRONGLY SUPPORT the latter. In the words of CACAP's deputy boss, if the Sirleaf administration does not seize the current situation and arraign all the dismissed employees of the Port before a court of competent jurisdiction for economic crimes, the larger public would understand the apathy to be a fertilization of impunity which is a far cry from the government's professed war against corruption, including the prosecution of former NTGL officials. The mere shedding of tears or dismissal of corrupt or alleged corrupt port officials is no solution to the Port's endemic corruption situation. The current political administration must convince the larger public that it means well in its prosecution of former officials of government for “economic sabotage” and that it is serious to weed out corruption from its ranks and files.