THE EDITOR
Are they going to brand CDC Representative Acarous Moses Gray a “troublemaker” or “enemy of the state” now that he is courageous enough to forecast the gloom and doom that could result from a dying economy and political discontent if drastic measures are not taken now in Liberia?
I was once a CDC sympathizer during the regime of corrupt former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before I jumped off the CDC bandwagon and went with VP Joe Boakai in the 2017 presidential elections. My instincts than are now becoming a reality for a rookie politician George Weah who still equates the presidency with playing a 90-minute football/soccer game.
And whatever became of President Weah’s football analogies? One of his best lines is how a coach reserves the right to bench a player performing poorly. And this is exactly what Representative Gray is alluding to in calling on President Weah as CAPTAIN to save a slowly sinking boat that is now taking in water.
Rep. Gray is sounding the alarm of potentially gathering clouds with booming thunderstorms and flashing lightning that may soon plunge the country into irreversible chaos and darkness. Is President Weah listening or does Weah want to get calls from William Tolbert, Samuel Doe, or Charles Taylor to awaken him from his slumber and apathy? His predecessors have the “experience” of what can happen to you if you take the Liberian people for granted.
I have suggested in my many political commentaries to then President-Elect George Weah to name his “uncle” Dr. Togba-Nah Tipoteh as Minister of Finance and Economic Planning or as Weah’s gatekeeper to the post of Minister of State for Presidential Affairs…to make the Weah-led regime look good and earn respect from the international community. I wasted my ink and paper.
I know Dr. TNT, a highly educated Kru man who earned his Ph.D. in economics when he was in his early 20s here in America. In fact, Dr. Tipoteh–fresh out of college–was hired by no small firm but by the White House as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President of the United States of America…and Dr. Tipoteh is unemployed in economically starving Liberia?
If your house doesn’t sell you, the streets won’t buy you is a common Liberian expression. And so this international economist who the United Nations has called upon a few times has been rejected and despised by former Liberian Presidents William Tolbert, Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and now by his little “nephew” President George Manneh Weah. But what you don’t know and you refuse to know will not help you….but will hurt you.
But no, President Weah rather has a former truck driver in Minnesota, USA, Samuel Tweah to manage the country’s finances and economy. President Weah also opted for Nathaniel McGill, a former office boy and a functional illiterate to a Harvard University law school graduate, Winston Tubman as his gatekeeper, speechwriter, Minister of State for Presidential Affairs. See why the country is in such a mess?
Both Tweah and McGill could never say no to Weah’s appetite for glamor and opulence and living like a Hollywood playboy, granting him his material desires for a $30 million presidential jet plane, a sprawling booming real estate empire with colorful townhouses, a handful of splendid mansions, a church, radio station, many incompetent friends and girlfriends in high positions and much more when some of his citizens can barely afford a cup of rice to eat.
It is now a month since the midterm senatorial elections, a referendum on the Weah presidency where is ruling CDC party “won” 2 out of 15 counties. But Weah has yet to realize the importance of this tsunami-like whipping/defeat he suffered and Rep. Gray is begging him to reshuffle his inept cabinet. 2023 is loading. Happy New Year Liberia. Just a thought and not a sermon.
Jerry Wehtee Wion
Washington, DC, USA.
“Jerry W. Wion” [email protected]