UP Stabs Corruption Fight In The Back - New DEAL Rep Alarms
A member of the House of Representative Saywah Dunah says President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her Unity Party officials in government are giving lip-service to and complicating the fight against corruption in the country.
Rep. Dunah, who represents Zoe-geh District in Nimba County on the ticket of the ticket of the New DEAL Movement, asserts in a press release last evening that difficulties cropping up in the passage of the Anti-Corruption Commission Act are due to the Unity Party-led government's lack of political will to pursue corrupt officials, coupled with President Sirleaf's demonstrated reluctance and indecisiveness in dealing with cases of corruption in the government.
According to Rep. Dunah, the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission Act, after more than six months of intense legislative debates and examinations, which he and others vigorously championed, was passed by a large majority of votes on Thursday, May 7, 2008 by the House of Representatives, but minutes after the passage, the Chairman of the ruling Unity Party in the Legislature, Rep. Bhofal Chambers, filed a motion of reconsiderations to halt its passage and return it for a re-debate.
“While we have worked hard and provided stiff defense to ensure the passage of the act, which we believe represents a positive move for the future of Liberia , we are alarmed that a calculative legislative stay action would come from none other but the ruling party to frustrate and doom our efforts,” Rep. Dunah said. “And considering President Sirleaf's non-proactive executive action and laissez-faire in pursuing corruption as ‘public enemy number one', we can only deduce that the avowed war against the pandemic is nothing but an empty exercise of political rhetoric which must be exposed to the Liberian people.”
Recalling President Sirleaf's National Address to the Nation on January 28, 2008 at the Joint Session of the National Legislature where she informed the nation that the National Port Authority was soaked in corruption and inefficiency, the Nimba County Representative says it is four months after that declaration and it seemed clear that the President who has full knowledge of corruption at the NPA is not executing her constitutional duty in correcting the administrative lapses.
“From the legislative stay action on the Anti-Corruption Act by an executive of the ruling party and the refusal of the President to deal with corruption in government institutions she told the National Legislature about, it brings us to the realization that there is a strong reluctance to clean up the government contrary to what we hear,” Rep Dunah said.
He said another contradiction that underscores the incredible vacillations in the so-called war on corruption by the government is the misuse of the 100 Community-Driven Fund implemented through the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2006/2007 Supplementary Budget.
According to him dozens of unfinished projects litter the countryside, even including the presidential compound renovation project in Buutuo, Zoe-Geh, Nimba County, which remains less than half way done.
“Since the President promised to investigate and prosecute those involved, nothing has happened and the same Ministry of Internal Affairs continues to preside over the community funds,” Rep. Dunar said.
“We find it totally unacceptable that the President continues to drag her feet in the war on corruption on two fronts, both by cuddling corrupt officials and the Unity Party's legislative stay action on the passage of the Anti-corruption Act. Let the President and the ruling party know that to fight corruption is not a choice for them to make but a mandate of the Constitution,” he said further. “It is her constitutional duty as enshrined in Article 5(c) and Article 7 to ensure that there is no abuse of power, misuse of public resources and all other corrupt practices as well as to advance the general welfare of the Liberian people and the economic development of the Liberia .”
The New DEAL representative also spoke of the reshuffling of officials where, according to him, there is no clarity as why one is removed from one agency or ministry and transferred to another.
“When one is removed for incompetence and sent to head another agency, it is no reshuffling as it defeats the purpose of change,” he said. “We observe that the President will announce the removal of an official without stating the cause and the next day ask the same dismissed persons to head the caretaker team. When a President who always laments the corruption in her government dismisses, we are convinced it is for corruption; but when that dismissed person is asked to continue though already dismissed in the same office, then we wonder over the President's seriousness to fight corruption.”
Describing the President's approach to cabinet changes as recycling of incompetence at various levels as she shifts ineffective personnel from one ministry or agencies to the other, Dunah said such an approach contributes the failure of the government to deliver on its constitutional obligations to the Liberian people through many of these agencies and ministry.
“As a true believer in social democracy, we believe good governance to be cardinal to the revival of Liberia ; we have seen how much this country suffered as the direct result of corrupt government. It has been scientifically established that Liberia is backward and underdeveloped because of corruption and bad governance which began in the 1960s and reached its heights when an army sergeant and a jailbreak who became Presidents left office as billionaire whilst many of their close aides and families are millionaire through the loot of the state coffers,” he further asserts.
“We want the Liberian people to know that to fight corruption it is not only to talk about corruption but to take concrete actions against corruption and corrupt official; the failure of President Sirleaf in taking action and the legislative action by the ruling party lawmakers on the Anti-Corruption Act are signal that there is no commitment to fight corruption by the President. It is worthy to observe that while the President dallies over the NPA, the corrupt officials there are continuing to devour the people's revenue and all over in the government the systematic self-enrichment is swallowing our government again and history is set to repeat itself.”
