Monrovia – The Movement for Economic Empowerment (MOVEE) has joined the critics condemning the last annual message of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Report by Edwin G. Genoway – [email protected]
MOVEE in a reactionary speech over the weekend said the Liberian leader annual message does not justify why the Unity Party led government is seeking continuity.
Using the words of Vice-President Joseph Boakai, MOVEE Chairman, Maxwell Kemayan said the fact that UP-led government could have done better was due to what VP Boakai called the “Squandering of Opportunities”, despite significant help from the international community.
The UP flag bearer spoke on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 when he appeared on the Bumper Show on the state-owned Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS).
“I think the government had a lot of opportunities that we squandered that we need to look into.”
“Indeed, the government has done quite a lot, but there could have been much more done. Time has not been utilized very well,” the Presidential thenhopeful pointed out.
But the MOVEE Chairman Kemayan said the words that comes to mind in Vice-President Boakai’s statement was “incompetence”.
“When one fails to do anything successfully when given the responsibility, which is called incompetence,”
He said the statement from the UP standard bearer is a serious indictment of the Sirleaf-Boakai administration.
“And this is why President Sirleaf’s speech should be greeted with relief, the Liberian people don’t have long to endure the Unity Party administration, and should prepare to move on with something.”
He noted that no nation which wants to move forward will reward incompetence, saying “not one that has been stuck in the pit of underdevelopment for so long as Liberia has been.”
Kemayan said MOVEE’s argument is not that “nothing has been done”; rather, “it is about the imperative to put Liberia on a new course that will bring about rapid transformation to make up for the many years of lagging behind,” saying “years that have been eaten up by the locust of incompetence, the lack of political will to put the interest of the country first, nepotism, corruption, manipulation and vindictiveness in high places and shortsightedness.”
“While we must acknowledge that the present administration did a number of good things–and there are few, if any, administrations that are all bad–the lesson of experience from the past eleven years calls for change to speed up the process of inclusiveness economic growth and development,” he noted.
The MOVEE Chairman said the need for meaningful change has been a timeless song in Liberia’s long history.
Kemayan noted that one area which has seen transformative change in the past eleven years is the financial sector carried out by the Central Bank of Liberia under the leadership of Dr. Joseph Mills Jones as Executive Governor of the Central Bank of Liberia.
The President provided a litany of accomplishments in the financial sector, perhaps, most importantly, he said, was the restoration of confidence in the financial system, the champion of the establishment of a fast-track commercial court, the development of the new insurance law of 2013, the increase in the number of commercial banks, including the establishment of eleven Rural Community Finance Institutions, and the development of the mobile money framework.
“Though widely acknowledged by the public are the efforts of the Central Bank of Liberia to improve access to finance for all segments of Liberian entrepreneurs, including market women, petty traders and farmers.”
” The Central Bank also tried to stimulate the mortgage industry, which benefited a number of Liberians.”