As Liberia’s House of Representatives reviews what public officials earn, lawmakers must not turn a national reckoning into a turf war with the presidency. The people who deserve their attention are the millions of Liberians who have the least.

LIBERIANS RARELY LEARN what the people at the top of their government are paid. So when Euphemia G.T. Swen-Monmia, President Joseph Boakai’s nominee for deputy governor of the Central Bank of Liberia, told a Senate committee on October 22 that she earns US$9,000 a month in salary and about US$5,000 more in cash benefits, with a housing allowance on top, she did her country a service. In a West African nation of about 5.2 million people still rebuilding from 14 years of civil war, her candor deserved a better response than the one it got.

DAYS LATER, THE lower house of the national legislature voted unanimously to review the pay and perks of every government official. On its face, that is welcome. But listen to the debate that came with it and a different motive surfaces. Members called their own pay “peanuts.” One said the Executive branch is “reaping the honey” while lawmakers are “falsely crucified.” Another declared: “We are suffering.”

WITH RESPECT, HONORABLE members: you are not the ones suffering.

A LIBERIAN SENATOR earns US$8,000 a month under the draft 2026 national budget. A member of the House drew a basic salary of about US$8,569 a month in 2025, before separate funding for guards, drivers and cooks. The legislature’s budget has grown from US$41.3 million in 2024 to US$51.7 million in the 2026 draft. A bill to cut senators’ pay to US$5,000 has stalled since 2020.

ON OCTOBER 9, more than 40 members boycotted the opening of the legislative session. Their grievance was not a clinic without drugs or a classroom without a paid teacher. It was their own unpaid allowances for fuel, medical care and constituency visits.

NOW CONSIDER THE other Liberia. About half the population lives below the poverty line. The lowest-paid civil servant earns US$150 a month. At that rate, it would take more than seven and a half years to earn what the central bank nominee receives in a single month, and more than four years to match one month of a senator’s salary.

TEACHERS HAVE GONE without their U.S.-dollar pay since October 2025. Nurses are asking for a monthly minimum of US$500, a sum that would still leave them earning one-sixteenth of what a senator takes home. These are the Liberians at the bottom of the barrel: the market women, farmers, motorcycle-taxi riders and jobless young people for whom a decent life remains out of reach. They have no committee to hear their complaints. They have only the lawmakers they elected.

A CONTEST BETWEEN the legislature and the presidency over who deserves the bigger share of a shrinking pie does nothing for them. Liberia’s national budget crossed US$1 billion for the first time this year, and the government projects spending will fall to US$1.02 billion in 2027. Every extra dollar for one group of officials must come from somewhere. Too often, it comes from those with the least power to object.

THIS IS NOT a defense of the Executive. Pay at the top of Liberia’s ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises is generous and almost never disclosed, and that must change. Representative Sumo Kollie Mulbah is right to demand that the Finance Ministry report every salary and benefit above US$5,000 a month. Liberians have a right to know what their ministers, directors and heads of public corporations take home, including housing allowances, fuel and phone-credit coupons and medical treatment abroad.

BUT THE REVIEW will mean nothing if it ends in a bargain among the powerful. Representative Musa Hassan Bility put it plainly: “We cannot continue to demand sacrifices from ordinary Liberians while protecting our own excessive privileges.” He urged the legislature to go first. His colleagues should listen.

WHEN THE COMMITTEES on Ways, Means and Finance and on Public Accounts report back in two weeks, we urge them to do three things:

1. PUBLISH IT ALL, starting with the legislature: the salary, allowances, support funds and benefits of every member, followed by every official in the Executive and state enterprises earning more than US$5,000 a month.

2. PASS THE CUT to senators’ pay that has waited six years, and set a firm ceiling on pay across all three branches of government.

3. DIRECT THE SAVINGS in the 2027 budget to where the need is greatest: teachers’ unpaid salaries, nurses’ pay and a higher minimum wage.

THE EXECUTIVE IS due to send the 2027 budget to the legislature by October 31. Lawmakers will soon show whose interests they serve. If this review becomes one more round in a fight among the powerful over who deserves more, Liberians will see it for what it is. If it becomes the moment the legislature finally looks down instead of across, it could be the most important thing this session does

Liberia cannot control global oil prices. It can stop traders from using the Middle East crisis as cover to overcharge the poor.

NO ONE IN Monrovia controls the price of crude oil. The conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States has pushed global oil prices above US$100 a barrel and disrupted shipping and energy markets worldwide. Few countries feel the shock more directly than Liberia, the West African nation of about five million people. It refines none of its own fuel, holds no strategic petroleum reserves and has little room to cushion a price spike that starts thousands of miles away.

WE ACCEPT THAT. Fuel prices were always going to rise this year. In April the government raised the retail ceiling price of gasoline from US$4.02 to US$5.09 a gallon, an increase of about 27 percent. That reflected a real global emergency.

BUT MUCH OF what Liberians now pay has nothing to do with the war. The extra cost is added after the fuel lands at the Freeport of Monrovia. That is where two state bodies must act: the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which sets the official price ceilings, and the state-owned Liberia Petroleum Refining Company (LPRC), which imports and stores the country’s fuel.

THE OFFICIAL CEILING is largely a Monrovia number. Senator Amara Konneh is a former finance minister who now chairs the Senate’s Public Accounts and Audit Committee. He told lawmakers this month that a gallon of fuel in Gbarpolu, the forested county he represents in north-western Liberia, sells for L$1,500, about US$8.60. That is roughly 70 percent above the government’s own ceiling. It is also more than drivers pay in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which has the third most expensive petrol in Africa, according to GlobalPetrolPrices data. In Gbarpolu, the senator said, a bag of cement costs US$15 against US$8 in the capital, and a 25kg bag of rice, the national staple, costs US$22 against US$17.

NO MISSILE STRIKE in the Gulf explains a gap that size between Monrovia and Bopolu, Gbarpolu’s county seat. Poor roads and transport costs explain part of it. Weak enforcement, and traders who know no inspector is coming, explain the rest.

WHEN FUEL PRICES rise, other prices follow. The taxi driver raises his fare, the truck owner raises his haulage rate and the shopkeeper raises the price of rice. The cost falls hardest on market traders, subsistence farmers, motorcycle-taxi riders and families saving to replace a mud house with a brick one. Liberia is one of the world’s poorest countries, and these households have no savings to absorb the shock and nowhere to complain.

THE GOVERNMENT’S ECONOMIC team deserves credit for restoring stability. Inflation is 4.6 percent, growth is projected above five percent, and the Liberian dollar has strengthened against the US dollar. But a stronger currency only helps if it lowers prices. Fuel prices are set in US dollars and converted into Liberian dollars at an official rate. If the Liberian dollar strengthens and the pump price in local currency does not fall, the gain goes to importers and retailers rather than the public.

THIS HAS ALREADY happened. A Senate committee report this year found that Liberians were overcharged by as much as L$131 million, about US$700,000, because the exchange rate used to calculate pump prices did not follow the Central Bank of Liberia’s movements. The report noted that nothing in the pricing formula required the Commerce Ministry or the LPRC to adjust when the rate changed. The refund, rebate or tax relief the committee recommended has yet to appear.

THE COMMERCE MINISTRY’S own price circulars warn that “hoarding, undercutting, or arbitrary price increases will not be tolerated.” Liberians now need to see those words enforced. We urge the Ministry and the LPRC to take seven steps.

FIRST, PASS ON exchange-rate gains promptly. The Liberian-dollar pump price should change whenever the Central Bank rate moves significantly, not wait for a monthly circular.

SECOND, PUBLISH COUNTY-LEVEL ceilings. Each of Liberia’s 15 counties should have a ceiling price that includes a transparent, fixed allowance for transport inland. Retailers should no longer be able to use distance to justify any markup they choose.

THIRD, DEPLOY INSPECTORS beyond the capital. Send them to Gbarpolu, Grand Cape Mount, Bomi and the south-east, where overcharging is worst and enforcement weakest.

FOURTH, NAME AND penalise violators. Publish the names of filling stations and wholesalers caught overcharging, and suspend the licences of repeat offenders.

FIFTH, OPEN A public price hotline. Citizens should be able to report overcharging and see what action follows.

SIXTH, MONITOR ESSENTIAL goods. Track the prices of rice and cement alongside fuel, since fuel is routinely used to justify every other increase.

SEVENTH, ACT ON the Senate’s findings. Return the money through a rebate, a temporary cut in the goods and services tax on fuel, or a credit in the next pricing cycle, as the committee proposed.

REGULATION ALONE WILL not end Liberia’s exposure to global shocks. That requires better roads, more storage capacity and serious planning for a strategic fuel reserve, so that the next crisis abroad does not become a crisis at home. Those are long-term tasks. Enforcing the price ceiling can start this week.

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT end the war in the Middle East. It can make sure that no Liberian pays more for fuel, rice or cement than the war actually justifies. Liberians should not pay extra for weak enforcement

The Boakai Government Must Rethink What It Pays Its Officials

WHEN MRS. EUPHEMIA G.T. Swen-Monmia sat before the Liberian Senate for her confirmation hearing as Deputy Governor for Economic Policy at the Central Bank of Liberia, she did something few public officials in this country ever do: she told the public what she earns. Acting in the post since August 12, 2026, she testified that her monthly salary is US$9,000, that she receives cash benefits of around US$5,000 on top of that, and that her housing allowance should be around US$15,000.

WE COMMEND HER candor. We cannot commend the numbers.

AT US$14,000 A month in salary and cash benefits alone, the deputy governor takes home roughly US$168,000 a year before a single dollar of housing is counted. A Liberian civil servant on the government’s US$150 monthly floor would need more than seven and a half years of uninterrupted work to earn what she receives in a single month. And many do not even reach that floor. As this newspaper has reported, civil servants across the country still survive on US$70, US$90 and US$120 a month, below the minimum wage set by the Decent Work Act of 2015.

This is not about one woman

LET US BE clear: this editorial is not an attack on Mrs. Swen-Monmia. By every account, she is a career professional who rose through the Central Bank on merit, served as director of its Financial Markets Department and was selected by the International Monetary Fund for its Special Appointee Program. Liberia needs competent technocrats, and the Central Bank must be able to attract and keep them.

BUT COMPETENCE DOES not require extravagance, and the problem is the system that sets these packages, not the individual who accepts one. A pay structure that delivers US$14,000 a month plus housing to a deputy governor of a central bank, in a country where tens of thousands of public workers cannot pay rent, is a structure that has lost touch with the people it is meant to serve.

Two sets of rules

WHAT MAKES THIS disclosure so troubling is the contrast with what ordinary public workers have been told. Last November, Finance Minister Augustine Ngafuan explained that the government was still using the previous administration’s pay scale and would move away from it only when conditions allowed, so as to keep Liberia on track with its IMF program. Civil servants were asked to wait. Nurses, after the government celebrated crossing US$1 billion in domestic revenue for the first time, asked for a US$500 minimum. They too are waiting.

THE MESSAGE TO the nurse, the teacher and the clerk is patience and fiscal discipline. The message at the top appears to be something else entirely. A government cannot preach austerity to the bottom of the payroll while the top enjoys packages that would be generous in far wealthier economies.

The Senate’s own house

THIS DISCLOSURE COMES on the heels of FrontPageAfrica’s reporting on a plan within the Liberian Senate to raise salaries for its staffers. The Senate has disputed that reporting and demanded a retraction. We stand by our story. And we note the irony that the same Senate now sitting in judgment of Mrs. Swen-Monmia’s nomination is itself accused of quietly expanding its own payroll.

THE SENATE’S COMMITTEE on Banking and Currency has a duty here. Confirmation is not merely about whether a nominee is qualified; it is also the moment for lawmakers to ask whether the terms of the job are defensible. Senators heard these figures under oath. They should not let them pass without question, and they should apply the same scrutiny to their own budget lines.

A volatile moment

THIS IS NOT an abstract debate. Liberia is a country where youth unemployment is high, where students in Monrovia’s public schools have taken to the streets over conditions in their classrooms, and where the gap between those who govern and those who are governed grows more visible by the day. Disclosures like this one are precisely the kind of spark that turns quiet frustration into public anger.

PRESIDENT JOSEPH BOAKAI came to power promising to rescue this country and to bring discipline to public spending. Every month that these disparities go unaddressed, that promise loses credibility. Silence from the Executive Mansion will be read, fairly or not, as approval.

What must be done

WE THEREFORE CALL on the Boakai government and the Central Bank of Liberia to:

* Immediately review and reevaluate the compensation package of the Deputy Governor for Economic Policy, and of all senior CBL officials, against the country’s fiscal realities.

* Publish the Central Bank’s full salary and benefits scale for its governors and senior management, so the public can judge for itself.

* Commission an independent review of pay across autonomous agencies and state-owned enterprises, where the widest gaps between top and bottom are often hidden.

* Direct the Senate, through its leadership, to make public its own staff salary plans and justify any increases before they take effect.

* Lay out a clear, dated timeline for lifting every civil servant to at least the legal minimum wage.

LIBERIANS ARE NOT asking their officials to live in poverty. They are asking for fairness, and for leaders who share the burden they impose on everyone else. Until those at the top accept the same discipline demanded of those at the bottom, every call for sacrifice from this government will ring hollow.

Six months after the House of Representatives expelled Rep. Yekeh Kolubah while a Supreme Court stay order was pending, the full bench has heard his appeal and reserved its ruling. The case rests on a narrow question: whether the House was properly served with the order. But the answer will decide whether court orders bind Liberia’s Legislature, and whether due process protects elected officials. FrontPageAfrica urges the Court to rule promptly and plainly.

THE SUPREME COURT of Liberia heard arguments on Thursday in the appeal of Yekeh Kolubah, the Montserrado County District #10 lawmaker expelled from the House of Representatives in April. The Court then reserved its ruling. The Court has every right to take time to deliberate. But Liberia cannot afford a ruling that is late, narrow or vague. The case is about more than one outspoken legislator. It tests whether a court order means anything once it reaches the doors of the Capitol.

THE FACTS ARE simple and troubling. On April 16, 2026, Associate Justice Yussif D. Kaba, presiding in Chambers, granted Mr. Kolubah’s petition for a writ of prohibition. He ordered the House leadership to stay all proceedings and summoned them to a conference on April 20. The next day the House voted to expel Mr. Kolubah. Forty-nine members signed the resolution. The House Clerk’s office said it had received no order from the Court. Yet the Court’s Marshal had delivered the writ to the offices of the Speaker and the Chief Clerk, where a receptionist and a computer operator received it.

IN MAY, JUSTICE Kaba dismissed Mr. Kolubah’s Bill of Information. He held that the House had not been lawfully served, because House Rule 26.5 names the Sergeant-at-Arms as the only officer authorized to accept court documents. Without proper service, he reasoned, the House could not be held in contempt. On Thursday, Mr. Kolubah’s lawyer, Cllr. Jonathan Massaquoi, argued that service on the Legislature is governed by the Civil Procedure Law, not by the House’s internal rules. He cited Section 3.38(9), which requires service on a government subdivision to be made on its chief executive. The Speaker’s office, he said, was the right place.

THIS IS THE first lapse the full bench must confront. A body’s internal rule cannot override the law of the land. If the House’s own rulebook decides who may receive a court order, the House effectively decides whether it has been served. Any institution that wants to escape judicial review would need only to keep its designated officer out of reach. No court in a constitutional democracy can accept that result.

THE SECOND LAPSE lies with the Court itself. The Marshal who delivered the writ is the Court’s own officer. If the service was defective, the defect began inside the Temple of Justice, not with the litigant. Yet Mr. Kolubah alone has paid the price, losing his seat while the procedural question was being argued. Justice should not depend on which desk a document happens to land on.

THE THIRD LAPSE concerns notice. The Court’s stay was public knowledge on Capitol Hill before the vote; Liberian newspapers reported it the same day. Justice Kaba correctly stated that contempt requires actual or constructive notice. The full bench should say plainly whether a legislature that reads of a stay order in the morning press, and proceeds anyway, can claim it did not know.

WE DO NOT defend Mr. Kolubah’s conduct. His remarks on the Liberia-Guinea border dispute angered many colleagues and citizens, and in 2021 he was suspended twice over his invective against then-President George Weah. Article 38 of the Constitution gives each House the power to discipline its members, including expulsion by a two-thirds vote of its entire membership. In a 73-member House, 49 votes is exactly that threshold. The House had the power to act. The question is whether it exercised that power lawfully, with due process, and while a court order was pending.

THE CONSTITUTION IS clear on due process. Article 20 forbids depriving any person of a right or privilege except after a hearing consistent with the Constitution and the law. Mr. Kolubah’s lawyers walked out of the committee hearing on April 15 after being denied a five-day extension and access to the evidence against him. That walkout may have been a tactic. But a committee that moves to expel an elected member within a week of the complaint, without giving his counsel time to see the evidence, invites serious constitutional doubt.

THE STAKES REACH far beyond District #10. Tens of thousands of voters have had no representative since April. If the expulsion stands on a technicality, every legislature in Liberia will learn that a stay order can be ignored if it is handed to the wrong clerk. If the Court instead voids the expulsion without addressing the House’s genuine constitutional powers, it risks a standoff between two branches of government. Neither outcome serves a country that has worked hard, since the end of its civil wars, to build institutions people trust.

LIBERIA’S DEMOCRACY HAS earned international respect, including through peaceful transfers of power. That record rests on a basic bargain: those in power obey the courts, even when the ruling is unwelcome. A House that can expel a member while a stay order sits in its own offices, and a Court that cannot say whether its orders were received, both weaken that bargain.

WE THEREFORE URGE the Supreme Court to rule promptly and to answer the questions directly. Who may lawfully receive service on behalf of the Legislature? Does the Civil Procedure Law govern, or the House rulebook? What is the legal effect of an act taken after a stay order was delivered, however imperfectly? And what process does the Constitution require before a member is expelled?

CLEAR ANSWERS WILL protect the next lawmaker, whatever party or district. They will also protect the House, by telling it exactly what the law requires. Silence or a narrow ruling would leave a dangerous precedent. Liberia needs the Court to be clear.

Liberia cannot claim to prioritize education while the capital’s public schools survive on less than 1 percent of a billion-dollar budget.

THIS WEEK, THOUSANDS of children in school uniforms marched to the Capitol instead of sitting in class. Their chant was the simplest demand any child can make of a government: “We want to learn too.”

THAT THEY HAD to make it at all is an indictment of all of us.

THE STUDENTS OF the Monrovia Consolidated School System are not troublemakers. They are the sons and daughters of families who cannot afford private school fees. For much of this year, they have watched their teachers walk out over unpaid salaries and broken promises. They have sat in classrooms without enough chairs, without books and without science supplies. Now they are spending school days on the streets, petitioning lawmakers to do what should have been done months ago.

EVERY DAY A child spends protesting is a day of lost learning. Every strike pushes the syllabus further behind. Ninth and twelfth graders face national examinations that do not pause for disputes between adults. Children who fall behind in a weak system rarely catch up. Some drop out for good. This is how a country quietly loses a generation — not in one dramatic moment, but one lost school day at a time.

WE DO NOT cheer children taking to the streets. Protests put students at risk, and there are troubling allegations that some adults are using students to settle personal and political scores. Those claims must be investigated, and student leaders must be protected from intimidation. But it would be dishonest to blame the children for a crisis they did not create.

A budget that forgot the classroom

THE ROOTS OF this crisis are written in the national budget. The government rightly celebrates Liberia’s first billion-dollar budget. Yet the school system that serves the capital’s poorest children receives US$7.2 million — 0.58 percent of the total.

THE LEGISLATURE’S DRAFT allocation alone is about seven times that amount. Debt service is 32 times larger. Security spending outpaces the entire education sector.

INSIDE THE SCHOOL system’s own budget, the priorities are no better. Schools receive less for educational materials than for stationery. Laboratory supplies for every science class in the system were cut to US$5,000 for the year. Generator fuel rose 27-fold. The government’s own projections cut operating funds by a further 44 percent in 2027.

THEN THERE IS the question of where the money actually goes. Budget records list most of the school system’s 2025 capital spending under projects that have nothing to do with schools: electoral reform, a new Finance Ministry headquarters, small-business support and an airport upgrade. Only 24 percent is labeled as school renovation. This may be an accounting error. But if the government cannot accurately record what it spends on its schools, how can parents trust that the money reaches them?

THE TEACHER CRISIS follows the same pattern. Volunteers are absorbed onto the payroll in emergencies, often with one-off money from the World Bank, rather than through the core budget. Tuesday’s decision to add 201 MCSS volunteer teachers is welcome. But it came only after children marched. Commitments that arrive only under pressure teach students a dangerous lesson: that the only way to be heard is to leave the classroom.

What must happen now

THIS NEWSPAPER CALLS on the government to match its words about education with money that reaches the classroom.

FIRST, THE FINANCE Ministry and the MCSS must publicly explain the capital spending recorded against airport, ministry and electoral projects. If it is an error, correct the record. If money meant for schools went elsewhere, return it and hold those responsible to account.

SECOND, RING-FENCE CLASSROOM funds. Educational materials, laboratory supplies and school repairs should not be the first lines cut when budgets tighten. The 2027 budget must reverse, not deepen, this year’s cuts.

THIRD, PAY TEACHERS from the core budget. Volunteers absorbed onto the payroll must be funded year after year, not rescued by one-off donor money. The salary reform promised to MCSS teachers needs a published timeline, not an open-ended assurance.

FOURTH, THE LEGISLATURE must do its oversight job. The House committees now reviewing the students’ petition should summon the Finance Ministry, the Education Ministry and

MCSS leadership in public hearings. Lawmakers who approved a budget that gives themselves seven times more than the capital’s public schools owe the students an explanation.

FIFTH, PROTECT THE students. Allegations that student leaders have been threatened, and that adults are drawing children into political disputes, must be investigated swiftly and transparently.

TO THE STUDENTS, we say: your cause is just, and you have been heard. Keep your voices peaceful, stay safe, and do not allow anyone to use your struggle for their own ends. The best way to hold leaders accountable is to stay in school and become the educated citizens they cannot ignore.

THE GOVERNMENT HAS made education one of the pillars of its development agenda. Pillars must bear weight. A billion-dollar budget that leaves children without teachers, books, or science supplies is not a sign of progress. Let the children learn.

IN NINE DAYS, ministers, mining executives, bankers and development partners will gather for the Liberia International Mining and Energy Conference and Expo, LIMEC 2026. There will be keynote speeches, gala dinners, signing ceremonies and a great many photographs.

LIBERIANS HAVE SEEN this film before.

WE HAVE WATCHED investment forums come and go, leaving behind glossy brochures, memoranda of understanding that quietly expire, and officials who return from the stage with little more than a social media album. We cannot afford for LIMEC to join that list. The stakes are too high, and the moment is too rare.

TO HIS CREDIT, Mines and Energy Minister R. Matenokay Tingban has set the right standard. LIMEC, he said at the launch, “must be measured not only by the quality of its discussions, but also by the investments it attracts, the partnerships it builds, the jobs it helps create, and the lasting benefits it delivers to the Liberian people.”

WE AGREE. AND we intend to hold the government to its own yardstick.

A history we must not repeat

LIBERIA KNOWS BETTER than most countries what it means to be rich in minerals and poor in outcomes. In the decades when LAMCO and Bong Mines made this nation one of the world’s leading iron ore exporters, the wealth flowed out through the ports of Buchanan and Monrovia while much of the population remained in poverty. That gap between the riches beneath our soil and the lives lived above it helped sow the grievances that tore the country apart.

TODAY, THE NUMBERS are moving again. ArcelorMittal has invested some $3.5 billion and is ramping toward 18 million tons of iron ore this year. A U.S. company has secured access to our railway to carry Guinean ore to Buchanan. New producers are lining up. The IMF projects 5.5 percent growth, driven by mining. Organizers say more than $3 billion in fresh investment is on the horizon.

THIS IS PRECISELY when a country either breaks with its past or repeats it.

What the government must do

FIRST, PUBLISH EVERYTHING that is signed. Every memorandum, letter of intent and agreement concluded at LIMEC should be made public, with named parties, dollar values and timelines. Ninety days after the conference, the Ministry of Mines and Energy should report to the Legislature and the public on what has moved from paper to ground. An MOU that is never published is not an achievement; it is a photograph.

SECOND, BE TRANSPARENT about the conference itself. LIMEC is being organized with a private events firm, AME Trade Ltd, under an agreement that entitles the Liberia Chamber of Mines to a share of the net profits. That arrangement may be perfectly sound. But Liberians deserve to know what the event costs, who is paying, who the sponsors are, and whether any public money is involved. A conference about transparent resource governance should practice it.

THIRD, FINISH THE rules before selling the game. In February, the minister said a new mining code would be ready within three months. Eight months later, lawmakers are still holding hearings and passing piecemeal amendments. Serious investors do not fear firm rules; they fear uncertain ones. The government should use LIMEC to present a clear timetable for a comprehensive mining law — including how proposed state equity stakes will apply, and to whom — rather than leaving the biggest question in the room unanswered.

FOURTH, GIVE HOST communities a seat, not a souvenir. The people of Grand Cape Mount have complained of homes cracked by blasting, polluted waterways and unfulfilled promises of schools, clinics and jobs. Nimba communities have their own long list. Community leaders, civil society, artisanal miners and county lawmakers belong in the conference hall and on the panels — not outside the gate. Investors should hear directly from those who will live with the consequences of their projects.

FIFTH, DEMAND A fair share — through the law. Gold prices have climbed to historic highs while Liberia’s largest gold producer pays a flat 3 percent royalty. Senators are right to ask whether such terms still serve the national interest. But the answer must come through lawful review and transparent negotiation, not public threats that frighten away the very investment we seek. Fairness and predictability are not opposites; the government must deliver both.

SIXTH, MAKE LOCAL content measurable. Speeches about Liberian jobs, Liberian suppliers and Liberian managers are cheap. Targets are not. Every new investment showcased at LIMEC should come with published commitments on local hiring, procurement and skills training, and a mechanism to check whether they are met.

SEVENTH, FIX THE power problem. Barely a third of Liberians have electricity. Without reliable, affordable power, the minister’s call to move beyond raw extraction toward processing and value addition will remain a slogan. Energy deals announced at LIMEC should be judged by megawatts delivered and households connected, not by announcements made.

FINALLY, NO RUSHED deals. Half of Liberia’s forested land is already covered by proposed or active mining licenses. Nothing should be signed in the excitement of a conference that bypasses environmental review or legislative scrutiny. The investors worth having will wait for due process.

Not a stage for politicians

WE ALSO SAY plainly: LIMEC must not become a showcase for officials hungry for headlines. Liberians do not need another procession of oversized delegations, generous per diems and staged handshakes. They need a working conference — technical, focused and accountable.

THE TRUE TEST will not be held at a hotel near Monrovia on October 28 and 29. It will be held a year from now in Yekepa, Kinjor, Buchanan and Gbarnga: in the jobs that exist, the clinics that open, the rivers that run clean, the lights that come on and the revenues that show up in the national budget.

THE GOVERNMENT HAS promised Liberians that this time will be different. LIMEC is its chance to prove it. We will be watching — and so will the Liberian people.

A Senate committee wants US$792,552 in the FY2027 budget for pay raises inside the Senate, with 70 percent going to senators’ personal offices. With half of Liberia below the poverty line and senators unwilling to cut their own US$8,000 monthly pay, the Pro Tempore should shelve the plan and put the poorest first.

SOMEWHERE IN MONROVIA this morning, a mother is deciding which of her children eats today. She sells pepper and bitter balls in the market, earns less than the US$5.50 a day the law says an unskilled worker should get, and spends most of it on a cup of rice. Her children’s school fees are overdue. Her story is not unusual. It is the story of half of Liberia.

AGAINST THAT BACKDROP, the Liberian Senate’s Committee on Rules, Order and Administration wants US$792,552 more in next year’s budget to raise salaries inside the Senate. Some of the raises run as high as 71 percent. The proposal now sits on the desk of President Pro Tempore Nyonblee Karnga-Lawrence, who ordered the committee to draw it up.

WE URGE HER, plainly and respectfully: put the brakes on it.

A Raise for the Senators’ Own Offices

THE COMMITTEE CALLS its plan a standardization of staff pay. Look closer. Seventy percent of the money, US$554,712, goes to the personal staff of senators: the chiefs of staff, political advisors and assistants each senator hires and keeps. The 29 chiefs of staff alone would cost taxpayers an extra US$166,692 a year. This is, in effect, a raise for the senators’ own political operations, paid for by a public that is already stretched to breaking.

IT COMES FROM a body whose members each earn US$8,000 a month, more than 50 times what a security guard or market worker is legally owed. Since 2020, a bill to cut that pay to US$5,000 has gathered dust. When it resurfaced last year, senators answered with murmurs of resistance. A Senate that will not trim its own salary has no moral standing to ask taxpayers for more, whatever the label on the envelope.

AND LOOK AT who gains most. The Senate’s Legal Counsel would jump from US$1,704 to US$2,920 a month. An executive secretary would get US$96. The committee cites the 2019 Remuneration Standardization Act, whose stated purpose is to narrow the inequality gap in government. Its own figures nearly double the gap between the top and bottom of its staff list. That is not standardization. It is the same old pyramid, made taller.

WE DO NOT dismiss the staff’s grievance. Many have not seen a raise since 2015, and they have every right to fair pay under the law. But so do the teachers whose US-dollar salaries went unpaid for months, the nurses now demanding a US$500 floor, and the civil servants still waiting for the harmonization cuts to be reversed. The US$792,552 the committee wants could pay 440 civil servants at the US$150 government minimum for a full year. Fairness that starts at the top of Capitol Hill never seems to reach the bottom.

A Test of Leadership

MADAM PRO TEMPORE, this decision is yours to shape. You commissioned the plan, and the Senate leadership will decide whether it goes into the FY2027 budget the Executive must submit by October 31.

IT IS NO secret in Monrovia that many see you as a future contender for the Presidency. If that ambition is real, there is no better place to show the country what kind of leader you would be. Liberians will remember who stood with them when a cup of rice cost more than a day’s wage, and who stood with the comfortable few.

TO RAISE PAY in the halls of the Capitol while families skip meals, while children sit at home for lack of fees, while millions live below the poverty line, is a slap in the face of the Liberian people. It tells them their suffering does not count.

WE ASK THE Senate leadership to do five things:

1. Shelve this package in its current form and keep it out of the FY2027 budget.

2. Reject any raise that benefits senators’ offices while senators refuse to cut their own pay.

3. Pass the long-stalled bill reducing senators’ salaries, and let the savings fund the lowest-paid Senate workers first.

4. Publish the Executive benchmarks the committee claims to match, so the public can judge whether a US$2,920 salary is justified.

5. Put teachers, nurses and the lowest-paid civil servants at the front of the line when new revenue is shared.

THE GOVERNMENT HAS just crossed US$1 billion in domestic revenue for the first time. President Joseph Boakai has said that money should improve the lives of ordinary Liberians. The Senate should not be the first to reach into that pot for itself.

MADAM PRO TEMPORE, the people are watching. Put the brakes on this raise, and put the bottom of the ladder first.

Senator Amara Konneh’s warning in Washington that Liberia stands at its “most dangerous point since the war and Ebola” should alarm us at home as much as it alarmed his hosts abroad. Opaque mining deals and a surging cocaine trade are buying influence inside our institutions, one official at a time. The reforms he proposes are overdue. But they will mean nothing unless the Legislature passes them in Monrovia, and unless our partners in Washington back them with targeted support rather than speeches.

FOR TWO DECADES, Liberia has told the world a story of recovery: from war to peace, from Ebola to resilience, from strongman rule to two peaceful transfers of power. That story is true, and it was hard-won. But a nation can lose in the shadows what it won in the open. Konneh’s message is that the threat today comes in a briefcase, not a gun. Sometimes the briefcase holds a concession agreement. Sometimes it holds cocaine.

CONSIDER THE MINING sector. It accounts for 12 percent of the economy and nearly two-thirds of export earnings. Yet, by the senator’s count, less than 3 percent of that wealth flows directly to the communities that live beside the pits, the rail lines and the poisoned creeks. Twenty-five-year agreements are negotiated by a handful of officials in Monrovia, then ratified by a legislature whose members, Konneh says, are softened up with jobs, scholarships and “facilitation fees.” Meanwhile, community members who protest environmental damage, in Kinjor and elsewhere, find themselves charged with “economic sabotage.”

THIS KIND OF capture is the more dangerous of the two because it is legal. Nobody goes to jail for signing a bad contract. The damage is spread across a generation, and the bill arrives long after the signatories have retired.

THEN THERE IS cocaine. This year alone, authorities seized 237 kilograms at Roberts International Airport and 3.9 metric tons in Duazon, a haul valued at $317 million. That figure is several times what this country spends on the health of its people. Money on that scale does not merely pass through a country. It buys customs officers, police commanders, evidence clerks and, eventually, elections.

WE HAVE ALREADY seen the first signs. Two agents of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency were convicted last month of reselling seized cocaine. A senior police commander was dismissed over a bribe in the same network. The people entrusted with fighting the trade were working for it.

THE PROSECUTION OF former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor will test whether the state can handle a case at the very top. She denies the charges, and she is entitled to the presumption of innocence. But the government’s decision to destroy the 3.9 tons of cocaine before trial was reckless. Unless the evidence is preserved and the process is beyond reproach, a conviction will be called a vendetta, an acquittal will be called a cover-up, and justice will lose either way. Liberians deserve a trial that can withstand scrutiny, whatever its outcome.

KONNEH’S PROPOSALS DESERVE serious attention:

• Publish every mining agreement, amendment and beneficial owner before ratification, not after.

• Value iron ore independently, as Botswana did with diamonds.

• Send a fixed share of royalties directly to the districts.

• Preserve drug evidence until final judgment.

• Subject airport, port and enforcement officers to lifestyle audits.

• Pass an unexplained-wealth law with teeth.

NONE OF THIS is radical. All of it is overdue.

BUT WE MUST also say this plainly: the Legislature that Konneh describes as being bought is the same Legislature he sits in. Reform cannot simply be a speech delivered in Washington. It has to be a bill passed in Monrovia. If the Senate is serious, it should begin by refusing to ratify any mining agreement that has not been published in full. That decision needs no foreign aid and no American permission. It needs only the votes.

TO OUR FRIENDS in Washington, the senator’s appeal is fair. The United States stood with Liberia through war, reconstruction and Ebola. It should not now confine its interest to drug busts and photo opportunities. Targeted help would make a difference: court monitoring, forensic audits of the biggest concessions, financial investigators on specific cases, and sanctions on the enablers who park stolen wealth in American real estate. If America turns away, others with fewer scruples will take its place. As Konneh put it, cartels do not ask about human rights.

LIBERIA’S NATURAL WEALTH was meant to be the foundation of our self-reliance. Instead it risks becoming the means by which our institutions are bought, one official at a time. The law must apply equally to the baggage handler and the multinational, to the police driver and the former vice president.

LIBERIA IS NOT yet captured. It is up to us, and to our partners, to make sure “not yet” never becomes “too late.”

Chief Justice Yamie Quiqui Gbeisay Sr. wants to end jury trials because jurors are being bribed and tampered with. But report after report, at home and abroad, has found the same rot on the bench. Taking the verdict away from twelve citizens and handing it to one judge would not end corruption in our courts. It would concentrate it. The call is wrong, and the Legislature should reject it.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE is right about one thing: jury tampering is real. Anyone who has followed a high-profile trial in Monrovia has heard the whispers of jurors reached, paid or pressured. When he used the opening of the Supreme Court’s October term to say that such practices threaten fair trials and public confidence, he was naming a genuine problem.

BUT HIS CURE is worse than the disease. Abolishing jury trials, with President Joseph Boakai and senior officials looking on, would take power from ordinary citizens and give it to the one part of the system that has the least public trust: the judges themselves.

THE EVIDENCE IS not rumor. It is the consistent finding of international observers for more than a decade.

THE U.S. STATE Department’s most recent human rights report on Liberia states that “the government generally did not respect judicial independence and impartiality.” It says judges “reportedly solicited bribes to try cases, grant bail to detainees, award damages in civil cases,” and to acquit defendants. It also notes that “the outcome of some trials appeared to be predetermined,” especially when the accused were politically connected or socially prominent.

THE BERTELSMANN TRANSFORMATION Index, a German assessment of governance in developing countries, has described Liberia’s justice system in the same terms. “Corruption of judges and juries constitutes a major obstacle to fair and transparent trials,” it found. Note the order of those words: judges first. The same index observed that “corruption is endemic despite salary hikes for judges and magistrates.”

THE NORWEGIAN-BASED U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre describes a judiciary that is “formally independent but characterised by severe functional deficits.” It says judges and magistrates are “reportedly subject to undue influence from the private sector and government officials.” It also finds that the bodies meant to discipline erring judges, the Judicial Inquiry Commission and the Grievance and Ethics Committee, “lack appropriate guidelines to deliver their mandates effectively.”

LIBERIANS THEMSELVES AGREE. In Afrobarometer’s latest survey, 52 percent of citizens said most or all judges and magistrates are corrupt. That is a majority of the public declaring no confidence in the very officials the Chief Justice would now make sole deciders of guilt and innocence.

SO WE ASK: if jurors can be bought, what makes a judge harder to buy? The arithmetic runs the other way. To fix a jury verdict, a corrupt party must reach several citizens drawn at random, who meet once, then go home. To fix a judge-alone verdict, they must reach one official who sits on the same bench, case after case, year after year. Corruption becomes cheaper, quieter and more durable.

THE JURY IS also one of the few places where ordinary Liberians hold real power in the justice system. It is the community’s conscience in the courtroom. Take it away, and the poor man in the dock faces the state, and whatever pressures the state can bring, with no one from his own community between them.

THERE IS ALSO the matter of law. The right to trial by jury is written into Article 21(h) of our Constitution. It cannot be repealed by a speech or a judicial directive. It would require a constitutional amendment approved by the people in a referendum, and we doubt Liberians will vote to surrender it.

WE HAVE SEEN this year how quickly jury disputes become political. In the Capitol Building arson trial, an entire jury panel was dissolved mid-trial at the prosecution’s request, and the case is now stalled before the Supreme Court. That episode exposed weaknesses in how juries are selected, managed and protected. It did not prove that judges alone would do better.

IF THE CHIEF Justice wants to restore confidence in the courts, there is a reform agenda waiting for him:

• Protect jurors in sensitive trials through sequestration, anonymity and fair pay.

• Prosecute those who bribe jurors, not only the jurors who take the money.

• Require judges to declare their assets publicly and submit to lifestyle audits.

• Give the Judicial Inquiry Commission teeth, and publish its findings.

• Assign cases at random, so no judge is hand-picked for a politically sensitive trial.

• Open courtrooms to independent monitors and publish transcripts.

NONE OF THESE requires amending the Constitution. All of them would strengthen the integrity of the system the Chief Justice says he wants to protect.

THE JUDICIARY CANNOT credibly ask the public to trust judges more while international reports, and the public’s own verdict, say they deserve to be trusted less. Clean up the bench first. Then let us talk about the jury.

UNTIL THEN, CHIEF Justice, the answer is no.

Rev. Dr. Samuel Reeves warned on Sunday that silence is not reconciliation and stability is not justice. Two days earlier, a courtroom clash between Judge Ousman F. Feika and Atty. Gbawou Kowou halted an economic sabotage trial and showed how much of Liberia’s energy is spent on battles that leave no one better off.

ON SUNDAY, FROM the pulpit of Providence Baptist Church, Rev. Dr. Samuel Reeves told Liberia something it needed to hear. “The first generation after conflict must not be satisfied merely because the guns became silent,” he said. “Silence is not the same as reconciliation. Stability is not the same as justice.”

IT WAS A sermon about resurrection, but it was also a diagnosis. Reeves argued that a nation can rebuild roads and still need to rebuild trust. A nation can construct buildings and still need to construct character.

TWO DAYS EARLIER, a few hundred yards away at the Temple of Justice, Liberia offered a near-perfect illustration of what he meant.

ON FRIDAY, CRIMINAL Court “C” Judge Ousman F. Feika dismissed a complaint by defense lawyer Gbawou Kowou. Kowou had accused the State’s asset recovery task force of summoning and pressuring defense witnesses. The judge found the allegation “absolutely false and misleading” and referred Kowou to the Supreme Court’s Grievance and Ethics Committee, with a strong recommendation that his license be suspended for a full year.

HOW DID IT come to this?

ON A SUNDAY afternoon, defense witnesses who had already testified ended up at the prosecutor’s offices. The court says that was a mix-up by the group’s own administrator. Their phones were taken at the door. Kowou, alarmed, went to the compound and started filming on Facebook live. Task force staff tried to stop him, and a scuffle followed. That night he took his accusations to a television talk show, despite a court gag order. By Monday, the trial was halted, the jury sent home, and a week of court time was spent investigating the lawyers instead of the case.

THE TASK FORCE is prosecuting alleged economic sabotage involving public money, and Liberians deserve to know the outcome. Instead, the country got a week-long fight about a fight.

THERE IS ENOUGH blame to go around. A lawyer who believes his witnesses are being intimidated has a duty to raise it, but in court first, not on a live stream. A prosecuting office that summons people to its premises on a Sunday should know exactly who is walking through its gate, and should not need a scuffle to sort it out. And a court that finds a lawyer breached its gag order has contempt powers built for exactly that. Recommending that he be taken off the roll for a year, removing him from every client he represents, invites the question of whether the punishment fits the offense.

THE GRIEVANCE AND Ethics Committee and the Supreme Court will decide Kowou’s fate, and they should be left to do so on the facts. But the larger question belongs to all of us. Why does so much of Liberia’s public life collapse into battles that leave no one better off?

WE SEE IT in our courts, where procedural skirmishes routinely outlast the substance of cases. We see it in our politics, where opponents are treated as enemies and every disagreement becomes a war of press releases and radio call-ins. We see it in institutions that spend more energy defending turf than serving citizens. Each battle feels urgent to those fighting it. Added together, they consume the time, money and goodwill a recovering nation cannot spare.

REEVES PUT IT plainly: “God rarely raises a community through spectators.” But a nation also cannot be rebuilt by combatants who mistake every quarrel for a cause. Somebody, as he said, has to forgive. Somebody has to tell the truth. Somebody has to lead with integrity. That includes judges, lawyers and prosecutors, who carry special responsibility for showing that disputes in Liberia can be settled by law rather than by noise.

THE PASTOR ALSO warned against measuring progress by the wrong numbers. “Raising 1 billion dollars in revenue is not the same as human flourishing,” he said. “Institutional survival is not the same as institutional excellence.” Courts that keep functioning are not the same as courts that inspire confidence. A trial that grinds on is not the same as justice being done.

LIBERIA HAS PASSED through its Friday. The question Reeves left hanging over Sunday’s congregation is whether we will keep reliving it in smaller battles, or choose the harder work of building something that lasts.

THE CHOICE, AS he said, belongs to whoever is willing to walk out of the tomb.