Monrovia – The Movement for Economic Empowerment (MOVEE) has reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring economic empowerment for all Liberians, who are in dire need of empowerment from a devastating regime.
Hoisting the flags of Liberia, MOVEE and the 15 counties at their relocated national headquarters in Old Road, MOVEE chairman Dee Maxwell Saah Kemayah said corruption is at its highest peak under the regime of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
Quoting a recently-released survey by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS), Kemayah said Liberians still live in abject poverty due to corruption.
“That release by LISGIS strengthens our resolve, as a party, to ensure that we take Liberians from the state of poverty to being empowerment, an empowerment through which Liberians will be able to pay their children’s schools and put food on the table for their respective families.
“We remain committed as we hoist our national flag to a good and resilient health system of our country. As we hoist our flag as a party, we remain very much committed to ensuring that there is a modernized form of learning or educational system of our country, taking our country from an educational system of mess to a modernized one,” said Kemayah, who was applauded by partisans.
He also disclosed that a MOVEE-led government will give priority to agriculture by moving from subsistence to mechanized farming.
“We remain committed, as a party, to taking the Liberian people from a point of subsistence farming to the point of mechanized farming. We remain committed to ensuring that Liberians take charge of the Liberian economy. We will not, in any way, compromise the empowerment of the Liberian people.
“We will utilize the resources of our country to ensure that the living standard of the Liberian people is improved.
We remain committed to ensuring that we transform the Liberian economy that we can move from the state of dependency to the state of independency. We will ensure that there is economic security.
“As a party, we will ensure that there is economic emancipation. Yes, we know that there is political freedom but we remain of the strongest conviction that we are yet, as a nation, to have economic freedom.
It is on these pillars that we stand and host this flag today,” said Kemayah, who promised hope and better future for Liberians by encouraging them to elect a MOVEE-led government during the 2017 Presidential and legislative elections.
Global Witness report quagmire
For the first time since Global Witness released its report, The Deceivers, which revealed Sable Mining, a British company, bribed Liberian public officials to change its concession law in acquiring Wologisi Mountain in 2010.
Addressing a news conference, MOVEE secretary-general Richard Panton called on the government to seriously consider the outcome of the special Presidential taskforce.
“Given the records of the many taskforces before, it will not be an exaggeration to say that they have been a collection of individuals without a meaningful task and lacking any credible force. The people of Liberia are tired of being taken for a ride on the road to nowhere,” said Panton.
Panton, who lectures public administration and economics at the University of Liberia and African Methodist Episcopal University (AMEU), questioned President Sirleaf’s professed quest to fight corruption, which she declared public enemy number one on January 16, 2006.
“Much has been said from the Executive Mansion about this government’s commitment to the fight against corruption. And the last colourful description was to adore it a vampire. The mythology of vampires is that they are mortal enemies of the living. Vampires kill.
“Unless something serious is done, corruption will deal a mortal blow to Liberia. Where is the anti-corruption commission? What was it established to do? If it is not functioning well, whose fault is it if it is not the very government that established?
“Now we have the Koffa committee. Can the President explain what Mr. Koffa brings to the table to give comfort to the people of Liberia that indeed this investigation will be different?
In an age of skepticism and justly so, the people demand an answer,” said Panton.
Panton also called for the reconstitution of the taskforce to be headed by the Justice Ministry, which have subpoena power and called on the National Legislature to constitute a commission of eminent jurists, civil society organizations and religious leaders.
Danesius Marteh, [email protected]