WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following tightly contested national elections on Oct. 10, with the two frontrunners separated by less than one percentage point of the vote, Liberians will head back to the polls on Tuesday to choose their next president. The winner will likely be whomever Liberians think offers the best chance of combating a multitude of issues, including poverty, corruption and safety concerns.

By Zach Bikus/Gallop Poll

Quick Summary: Incumbent President George Weah, who garnered 43.83% of the vote in the previous election, rose to prominence as an international soccer star, playing with clubs such as AC Milan and Chelsea. He faces former Vice President Joseph Boakai, who received 43.44% of the initial round of voting. The two have met previously, with Weah defeating Boakai for the presidency in the 2017 election.

Living Standards: Bad and Getting Worse
Slightly over a third of Liberians (37%) in 2023 are satisfied with their standard of living, down from 41% in 2018 when Weah took office. Moreover, just 43% feel their standard of living is getting better, compared with 56% who feel it is getting worse.

Material shortages and poverty have weighed upon Liberia for decades, with food and shelter being primary concerns. Nearly three in four Liberians (74%) say there were times in the past 12 months when they did not have enough money for food, while 60% struggled to afford shelter.
These concerns have likely driven many Liberians to consider life outside the country. The latest Gallup data show that 76% of Liberians say they would move permanently to another country if given the opportunity, one of the highest levels Gallup has recorded in the world since 2007.

Liberia Ranks Among Least Secure Countries in the World
Liberia, which has undergone two civil wars since 1989, continues to suffer from insecurity, with residents ranking the country as unsafe on a variety of measures. Just a third of Liberians (32%) felt safe walking alone at night in 2022, far below the sub-Saharan African median of 51% and among the lowest in the world. High numbers of Liberians also reported having money or property stolen (53%) or being assaulted or mugged (29%) in the past year. Illegal drug use and trade have afflicted the country in recent years as well, with a UNFPA Liberia report estimating that 20% of youth use narcotic substances.
These factors find Liberia ranked at the bottom of Gallup’s Law and Order Index for 2022 with a score of 49, while the global score stood at 83. Uncertainty in the local police force depressed the country’s score, with Liberians being far less confident in their local police (45%) than the median of 60% across all of sub-Saharan Africa.

• 56% of Liberians feel their standard of living is getting worse
• 74% report not having enough money for food in the past year
• 32% felt safe walking alone at night in 2022, among the lowest in the world

The most recent data collected by Gallup this year show that these unsafe conditions persist. Confidence in the local police has fallen even further, from 45% to 42%, while the percentage reporting being assaulted in the past year has remained largely flat, moving from 29% to 28%. Liberians’ reports of feeling unsafe walking alone have also remained nearly unchanged, suggesting that insecurity continues to be elevated throughout the country.

Slim Majority Approve of Weah, but Downward Trend Could Spell Trouble
This election will serve as a referendum on Weah’s leadership since 2018, which has proven to be a tumultuous time for Liberia. After enjoying high job approval ratings in the honeymoon period immediately after taking office, Weah’s approval has dipped. In the latest Gallup poll, conducted just before the October election, 54% approved of his job performance, down from 65% in 2022.

Weah’s government has been hit with corruption charges throughout his term, including imposing U.S. sanctions on his chief of staff and other officials for reports of misappropriation of state assets and bribery. Most Liberians (81%) see corruption as widespread throughout the government, but this figure is largely in line with the average since 2007, suggesting the problem is far more entrenched in the government beyond just Weah’s administration.

Implications
Though making great strides in stability after the conclusion of the country’s second civil war in 2003, Liberia has faced headwinds in securing improved material standards across the country. Poverty, corruption, poor transportation and food shortages are widespread throughout the population and look likely to continue for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 weighed on an already fragile healthcare system still recovering from the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, which killed 4,810 people in the country, including 8% of the nation’s doctors, nurses and midwives.
Weah came to office in 2018 promising to fight corruption and transform the economy, areas where the country has fallen short. Weah has touted his successes in building new roads in rural areas but argues that he needs more time to make big strides due to setbacks from COVID-19.
However, Boakai contends that Weah has worsened Liberia’s position, campaigning under the slogan “Rescue” and imploring people to join his rescue team to save the country. The razor-thin margins of the initial election suggest that the country remains deeply divided over which candidate offers the best chance of improving the lives of Liberians.

MONROVIA – A robust plan initiated by the government to ensure effectiveness in fiscal transparency, has brought some achievements following strides made over the years.

 The Government of Liberia is committed to fiscal transparency, making available all of its financial reports and documentation in the public domains – public discourses, print, and electronic media outlets.

With regard to the international budget partnership transparency index, Liberia has improved in the index scoresheet in budget transparency from 38 percent in 2019 to 45 percent in 2021. 

Liberia  subscribed to the principles of open governance and became a member of the International Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2012, International Budget Partnership (IBP), and most recently in 2019 applied for full stewardship to the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) of which is expected that in August of this year (2022), Liberia will be officially admitted into the GIFT Stewardship Network in Bogota, Islamic Republic of Colombia

It can be recalled that since its ascendancy to the IBP, the country has participated in seven (7) rounds of Open Budget Surveys (OBS), which is periodically conducted every two years by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), a subsidiary of the World Bank Group. 

Liberia’s current OBI stands at 45% as of the 2021 OBS Report, while under the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Agreement, the country is required to produce it annually and make it publicly available, in a timely manner.

Also, about 10,000 copies of the Citizen’s Guide to the National Budget (summary of the national budget) will be produced, while the government is expected to hold 15 town halls, conduct 15 live radio phone-in talk shows aimed at discussing the national budget and related budget documentation, as well as respond to questions from the public on its fiscal reports, including the national budget.

As per the OGP, there will be a publication in at least five (5) widely read local dailies and on government websites of its financial reports and key information regarding the preparation, adoption/approval, execution, and reporting of the National Budget, including making available to the public free of cost, in an interactive, user-friendly and machine-readable format eight (8) types of budget documents in a timely manner as set by law.

Additionally, in an effort to improve and increase fiscal transparency, the Government has devised a plan to improve its index score of the three dimensions. 

Beginning with the preparation of the FY2023 National Budget, a Fiscal Transparency Advisory Group will be inaugurated, consisting of both Government and Civil Society Organizations and implementation of town hall consultations to solicit citizens’ inputs for determining budget priorities for the FY2023 National Budget. 

In addition, the Government will complete, commission, and launch the go-live of several digital platforms, including the Citizen’s Budget Portal, Citizen’s Feedback Mechanism, etc. which will provide opportunities and more access to its fiscal data.

MONROVIA – The Government of Liberia has issued administrative control measures intended to reduce growth in its wage bill, as well as to ensure efficiency in the allocation of the National Budget.

According to the Wage Bill Control Regulation, endorsed by Cabinet on March 9, 2020, all employments and promotions within the central government have been centralized through the Civil Service Agency and the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, and are subject to the agreed establishment posts of the spending entities as well as the availability of budgetary allocation. 

New employment or promotion of existing employees will have to be co-approved by the designated authorities of the CSA and MFDP.

Additionally, as part of the new administrative expenditure control measures, all new employments across Government shall be thoroughly vetted and duly authorized through the CSA and MFDP before placement on the wage bill. 

The regulation clarifies that these new employments will mainly focus on employments in social services sectors such as health and education, in addition to the security sector.

To sustain the removal of ghost employees, the Wage Bill Control Regulation emphasizes the reinforcement of  biometric enrollment of all employees across the central government and requiring National Identification Numbers (NIN) for all employees of the Government of Liberia before the end of the March, 2020. 

The Regulation warns that employees failing to meet end of March 2020 deadline will not receive their salaries beginning the month of March until their respective agencies submit their national biometric identification cards to the Inter-Agency Wage Bill Harmonization Team.

The Administrative Wage Bill control Regulation has also mandated the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and the Civil Service Agency, through the Interagency Wage Harmonization Team, to complete the harmonization and standardization of pay across all State-Owned Enterprises (SoEs), consistent with the National Standardization Act of 2019 before the end of June 2020. All State-Owned Enterprises (SoEs) are required to adhere to the measures contained in the regulation to support Government’s efforts to efficiently manage the country’s scarce public resources..

The National Payroll Ghost Removal Taskforce, which has been constituted by His H.E. President George M. Weah, comprises four agencies of government: The Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Internal Audit Agency, the Civil Service Agency, and the National Identification Registry.  

The Taskforce will be chaired by the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning through the Liberia Macroeconomic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC), the research and policy think tank within the MFDP that is currently leading on the on-going wage harmonization and standardization exercise.  LIMPAC shall supervise the daily activities of the Taskforce as well as forge persistent collaboration with other members and the spending entities of interest to identify and immediately remove or blocked ghost employees from the government payroll.

As Co-Chair of the taskforce, the Internal Audit Agency is mandated to institute physical audits of payrolls for entities on interest and provide findings to the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning through LIMPAC and the Civil Service Agency  for immediate actions.

The Taskforce will institute headcounts of all government employees at various spending entities across Liberia, and Foreign Missions outside of Liberia. The headcount will focus on employees who have been assigned pay grade and are currently enlisted on the automated payroll system of the Government of Liberia.  The ghost removal taskforce is given a six-month mandate beginning March 2020 to comprehensively and sustainably clear the public sector wage bill of ghost employees.