MONROVIA – Deputy Minister of Information for Public Affairs, Mr. Eugene Fahngon, who just returned from an indefinite suspension for making derogatory statements, says President George Weah has not received any petition from the Council of Patriots and challenged journalists to find out when it was delivered and who received it.
Report by Lennart Dodoo, [email protected]
Fahngon’s Statement:
On June 7th, in fact, at that occasion, COP made it quite clear that the concern was to march on June 7th and present their petition.
On June 7th, instead of giving their petition to the government, what we saw was a demand and at the end of the day the COP walked away without presenting their petition.
As it stands right now, our President has not received any petition from the COP. I repeat, we have not received any petition from COP.
And if in your discharge of your duties as journalists, it will be right before you carry a story from them (COP) to say that they presented their petition, please do a favor by asking them where was the petition presented, who presented the petition and who received the petition.
If you don’t get answers to the three questions then know that but what I can say is that the government is open to dialogue with citizens regardless the canopy you come under we remain open for dialogue.
But we have been hearing up to this morning that we (COP) presented our petition but what I saw was a Facebook post where a few gentlemen sat and after that read out a something from their laptops and after that read out a lot of demands.
You and I did not see any presentation. What we saw was a reading ceremony.
Min. Fahngon’s assertion, which he made at Information Ministry’s regular weekly press briefing on Thursday, appears to be far from the truth as FrontPage Africa has been able to establish that the petition was presented to the Office of the President on Tuesday, June 11. The petition was received and signed for by one Vera Parker in line with the protocols in presenting letters to the office of the President, said Mr. Abraham Darius Dillon, spokesman of the Council of Patriots.
Speaking earlier to FrontPageAfrica, Mr. Mohammed Ali, a leading member of the COP, described Mr. Fahngon as a “blatant liar”.
The petition, among other things, calls on President Weah to take pragmatic steps in addressing corruption, good governance, provision of basic services and resuscitate the country’s broken economy.
President Weah on Wednesday, a day after the petition was presented, delivered an address to the nation acknowledging the June 7 protest and commending Liberians for conducting themselves in a peaceful manner in expressing their democratic franchise.
“You are aware that some of our citizens exercised their constitutional right to publicly assemble with the objective to petition their government. We commend them for the peaceful and orderly manner in which they exercised that right,” he said.
However, Pres. Weah blamed the country’s dwindling economy on previous regime, noting in his recent address to the nation that “Last year, when I assumed the Presidency, I informed you that we had inherited a broken economy and pledged to you that I would exert every effort to fix the economy and improve the lives and livelihood of our people. While our efforts to fix the economy are sustained and ongoing, we still face challenging times.”
He said, it would take the collective effort of all Liberians to achieve the desired objective of reviving the economy and placing the country on a path of sustainable development and transformation.
President Weah then called on the leaders of political parties, civil society groups, elders, religious leaders, traditional leaders, student leaders and the business community to a round-table discussion to afford them the opportunity to present their alternative views or their suggestions on the economy.