The civil war has since ended but the horror and remnant of the macabre war still remain rife on the minds of many Liberian who witnessed the events that brought Liberia at the cul-de-sac of bloodshed and nadir of man’s inhumanity to man. Our people were dislocated in shantytown living horrible existence and shameful life.
They marched through the sub region with a badge of shame and were treated as if they were children of a lesser god. The war did not only destroy the lives of 250, 00 Liberians but also usher in a paradigm shift that borders on the scramble for job, corruption, and vices that hinder the engendering of “African egalitarianism as eloquently espoused by Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere.
In 2005 the Liberian state took a monumental dramatic U-turn from the dungeon of civil insensitivity to the height of peaceful leapfrog, by ushering a democratic transition which led to the election of Madame Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first elected female President. That election was fiercely contested by Liberians from all strata of the social divide.
Liberians then taught that that singular democratic endorsement of Madame President would have opened the vista of opportunities for all Liberians irrespective of their religiosity, ethnicity, political persuasions and social background. Whether the charge has been kept or upheld rightly is an analysis we have to do in order to either vindicate ourselves from the charges of political miscalculation or to exonerate ourselves from the trappings of wrongdoing. Again both analysis must be baptized in the ocean of fact and truth-telling that are the guiding principles for the various forms of discourses.
This glorious land of liberty has failed to live the true meaning of its existence since the inception of the Ellen-led administration. Apologists of this regime will argue that the people are enjoying unprecedented freedom of speech, construction of roads, etc. One is not arguing against those hard facts but what one is essentially asserting, is that if you were to do a scrupulous juxtaposition of the gains made by this regime against the odds of it, individuals imbibed in the virtue of objective reasonableness will aver that the nation’s progress is being precluded by the logjam of corruption, malfeasance, sadistic cruelty and ideological bankruptcy.
Political duplicity, moral turpitude, dastard prebendalism remain the ideological citadel on which this government is built. The people are living in Bantustan void of any cultures, norms, savvy societal core values. Thinking about the future of their children, foreshadowing a better future for Liberia, don’t resonate with the people anymore. The people gradually understand that their forward march is illusive and hallucinatory until a government with an ideology that will bring them into the centrefold of history is given the leadership magistracy of the state.
Our population is in desperate need of food, water, medicine and fundamental social amenities that guide the existence of the people and improve their living standard. Their livelihood is compared to that of the Middle Ages and the Stone Age when the civilization of humanity did not make a tremendous leapfrog into a better realm. Harnessing a better future for themselves remains a dream like the dream of ‘Alice in wonderland.’
What we see nowadays in our political architecture is the reverse of the ‘Social Contract Theory,’ the theory that is the covenant-in-chief between the governed and the government. This collective bargain agreement is not being implemented by the government, a tragedy that is allowing the people to put on the regalia of poverty as a badge of honor. This sad state of affairs is beginning to raise many uncomfortable questions and is giving rise to the search for the hypothesis that will inform the decision of the people.
The existence of every society—its failure and success is predicated on the economic foundation of its people. The growth of the country must not only be measured by its GDP increase whether single or double digits but must be looked at from the perspective of the two twin evils in economics—inflation and unemployment. Let the growth be a reflection of the improvement in the people’s livelihood and let it reflect their socio-economic mobility. But the statistics of romantic economies from the Bretton Woods institution is predicated upon the benchmarks set by them in contrast to the fundamental reality in many countries. Theirs is a modelled tailored on perfunctory growth. That is the reason why their growth indicators do not resonate with the reality in most countries, especially African countries.
Our economy is in total shamble and what we see nowadays is the remnant of a wrong panacea for a putrid illness. This prescription, like its predecessors, continues to keep us in the visual cycle of poverty and economic paralysis. Our future continues to look bleak and the people are beginning to show apathy for the status quo.
Man’s inhumanity to man is what this model breeds. As, if the forced laboring of our people on plantation in America and the West indies was not enough, the reintroduction of such tendency is the fulcrum on which the economy is built. The imperialists have come into our country and reintroduced that which revolutionaries struggled against in the past. Our people have been bundled up in mines and concessions under precarious circumstances and horrible conditions. They are at the lowest ebb of the economic ladder and the highest echelon of poverty yet our government prides itself as the only establishment in the annals of this nation that has brought a 16 billion Foreign Direct Investment into it.
Economic growth in the republic is not measured by the opulence or upward mobility of the people but rather by the investment portfolio in it. We have been bombarded by the mantra of unprecedented investment but in true it is a cosmetic deodorization of the economic menace that continues to imprison the people. Like the ‘’open Door Policy” of Tubman that did not address the fundamental economic reality of this country, the economic policy of this government further expose the lethargy of a system that cannot endure into the future.
Like Marikana is to South Africa, the Niger delta is to Nigeria, so Yekepa and Butaw are to Liberia. As the question of wage slavery rings true in Marikana, so the question of salary disparity remains the biggest questions at concessions in our country. The people who are the owners of the land have been treated with indignation. Their shrine destroyed, their farmland disfigured and their culture destroyed.
Whether we accept it or not, unarguably the current outlook of our society is the dominant philosophy of the bourgeoisie and the bias of the society we live in. This concept can be understood based on the ruling class, through its control of the orthodox media, press, pulpit mosque, etc., justifies this system of inequality and exploitation as the ‘natural form of society’. And, the ruling class further posits that such structure is the design of God, and any attempt to reverse it is tantamount to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and sacred catechism of God – Even though this is a colossal lie and massive distortion of the truth.
Even our opposition political parties have not demonstrated the will to usher in the much needed transformation the country is thirsty for. Nowadays our opposition politicians feed on sectarian rhetoric, tribal bigotry and parochial schism that are devoid of the apropos issues that continue to wreck the very existence of the people. Most of them have not presented a simple manifesto to the people outlining their plans to redeem the state and how they will engender wholesale economic transformation like the one that has taken root in Botswana, the Asian Tigers/Dragons, etc. Some do not even have a simple manifesto to offer yet they want to be entrusted with the power of the state.
Like the bourgeoisie in its revolution against the moribund feudal society, challenged and confronted the conservative ideas of the conservative ideas of the feudal aristocrats; therefore the Liberian students, working class, in its fight to enthrone the people’s dictatorship that will end wage slavery and labor exploitation, must annihilate its own oppressor, the capitalist class, and engender a society which leit motif will firmly be rooted in Pan Africanism: African nationalism, scientific socialism and continental unity.
About the Author:
Alfred P. B. Kiadii is a student of the University of Liberia who studies Political Science and Public Administration. He is an ardent disciple and follower of the philosophical construct and the Pan-Africanist ideological construct of Dr. H. Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, Gamal abdel Nasser, Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden. Furthermore, he is the Director of the Bureau of Information, Press, Outreach and Mobilization of the Liberia National Students union (LINSU). He is a convinced young men who believe in the potency of the people to make history.