Again, the Sirleaf government, through cunning machinations, has bought itself some time from falling under the quantum weight of the triumphant march of the masses of Liberians onto the stage of history. It now shamelessly celebrates its perceived victory over the people’s struggle for economic freedom, thus confirming its anti-democratic credentials.

The first time it was the cancelled April 12 Demonstration of 2013. The increasing rallying support of the masses from across the country toward the protest and the fear of April with its dark history became a matter of serious concern to the government.

The demonstration did not occur and the government, through Isaac Jackson, then Deputy Minister for Press and Public Affairs, Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism, boasted of bribing the planners to call it off. The popular gossip is that US$30, 000 was taken from government’s covers and used as a trade-off to end the protest.

Just recently, it was the failed ten-day planned nationwide closure of businesses and strike action of the Patriotic Entrepreneurs of Liberia (PATEL) in the name of seeking economic freedom for Liberian businesses.

Prior to this, PATEL successfully hosted  a three-day protest that caused for the first time in history the economic shutdown of business life in the City of Monrovia by the willing and enthusiastic volition of business people themselves and not through fear of any kind.

This demonstration of the firm resolve of the Liberian people to stand to the occasion to take action when their rights are unbearably trampled over, precipitating the gradual drop in the exchange rate and prompting many to believe that the inflicted rate was a cause of government for a selfish agenda instead of the sole cause of the global economic crisis as argued by pro-regime apologists and ‘romantic economists’, charged the business men and women to demand through PATEL for more rights under the banner of “economic freedom.”

More than the Rice Demonstration

The success of the first protest energized prospects of the second to be grander. The planned national coverage and duration of the second protest, undoubtedly, had the potential of a revolutionary upsurge. Its success promised to be the biggest demonstration of the masses of people on the stage of history, far greater the 1979 Rice Demonstration that is so far reputed as the first and greatest action of Liberians in the cause of social justice and economic freedom.

The Rice Demonstration, even though a Monrovia held protest, panicked the moribund and decadent True Whig Party government and left power on the street for over forty eight hours. What more would a national closure of all businesses have caused the Sirleaf’s regime in minutes?

Already the country is stagnated in abject poverty, massive unemployment and backwardness in the midst of great material wealth that can engender massive turnaround. Curable diseases are killing the people in their hundreds.

Young boys have taken to crime and drugs and their sisters to prostitution. Single mothers barely feed their children and themselves. Students are dropping out of school for inability to pay their fees. Income disparity between the few wealthy foreigners, the indigenous bourgeois and the masses of people are widening astronomically day by day.

In such a situation, halting economic life for ten consecutive days and, according to the protesters, beyond, if need be, was sufficient enough to break every  chain of restrain holding back the masses and open the floodgates of consciousness and protest to unimaginable proportion.

Guided by a revolutionary leadership that would have sustained the astronomical number of students, workers, marketers, ‘pem-pem’ and ‘kekeh’ riders and others joining the protest across the country, the regime would have gone down history as a victim of the people’s revolutionary action.

Fear, Mix Reactions and Fight Back

The announcement of the national strike action aroused great fear in the regime. The forces of reaction understood well the magnitude and inevitable aftereffects of Liberians from all sectors of the economy bringing all activities of economic life to a standstill, thus awakening the consciousness of the rest of the population, unable to bear the starvation and despair, to join the protest against a regime that distributes immeasurable suffering to its people.

The regime realized that the marching onto the streets of students, marketers, workers and everyone would mean the end of its survival. Madam Sirleaf and her courtiers couldn’t bear the thought of being crash under the merciless feet of an enraged citizenry seeking revolutionary change.

Recounting from the success of the first three-day protest and the history of April-notably the April 14, 1979 Rice Demonstration, the April 12, 1980 deposing of the moribund and decadent TWP, the April 6, 1996 bloody crisis- the regime began to feel increased blood pressure  and  gaseous reaction in its tummy. 

On the other hand, the lessons from Egypt and elsewhere became afresh. Before history, the masses of the people exercised their inherent power greater than the constitution that brought down despots and changed the course of history.

In Liberia, the regime knew it would be foolhardy on its part to show its fear publically. This would have given more courage to the protesters. She must pretend to be in control and employ sinister devices to thwart the protest. Thus, she would proceed to psychological warfare using mix reactions.

The Liberian National Police, noted for brutalizing peaceful students and protesters,   invited PATEL for questioning on its distribution of leaflets to business and warned that it would not condone any action that will destabilize the country’s peace especially as elections are around the corner.

For his part, Information Minister Eugene Nagbe, notoriously considered as the engineer of government’s dirty works dating back to the regime of Charles Taylor, called the planned protest a disturbance of the peace and economy growth. He warned that government will not tolerate the protest.

The Liberia Chamber of Commerce, in its April 6 press release, appealed for dialogue rather than protest. In its logic, the LCC claims that the history of disagreements between the business community and the government are not resolved by strike which, it adds, leads to damage. 

But the umbrella organization of business in Liberia, clearly demonstrating to be acting under the directive of the government, did not give any account of negotiations with the Government of Liberia that were handled without a strike. In reality, this government, as all governments in the past, does not know what negotiations means when it is not demanded by the people in their mass. 

Not surprisingly, because it was clear that LCC wasn’t acting on its own, the appeal ended in a subtle condemnation when the press release in its closing called for obedience to the law as though it is illegal for people to shut down their businesses and protest.

The right of citizens to assemble and seek redress as guaranteed by the constitution did not apply in the case of PATEL, as the LCC portrayed.

Speaking on the Truth Breakfast Show, Justice Minister Frederick Cheru threatened that any business to adhere to PATEL’s request would remain closed.  He accused the protest as being politically motivated and announced that police have been sent to ensure that businesses that wanted to be opened wasn’t prevented as though PATEL had threatened anything of such. 

Before the first day of the planned protest, it became clear that the government had penetrated the business community with its threats and subversive activities. Its psychological war to install fear and other underpinnings were successful.

On April 10, which should have been the beginning of the protest, police officers were seen in market places with whips as a show of intimidation. Businesses, fearing retribution, began to open. The protest was call off to the amusement of the regime and its misleaders.

Beyond PATEL

The forces of corrupt leaders are celebrating the failure of the strike action called by PATEL. With their fears no more, they have begun to unleash the final looting of the national covers as election draws nigh and the regime’s end is counting by months now.

The regime and its apologists are either ignorant or have soon forgotten that the people’s quest for revolutionary change is contingent on the repeated denial of their rights that arouses to an unbearable peak and causes them to make a revolutionary move.

Like in the case of all backward regimes in history, this regime does not acknowledge that to survive from one, two, or more revolutionary actions of the people does not mean it is victor but an indication that it should act in sync with the people’s aspirations for better life.

The display of PATEL was just one in a succession of revolutionary actions in Liberia’s history and to continue to infinity. The people in several ways have demonstrated their demand for social justice and economic freedom. 

The long chain of little struggles became heighten in the Progressive upsurge in the 1970s that occasioned the historic Rice Demonstration. The struggle for social justice and economic freedom or the struggle for rice and rights will endure long after PATEL’s struggle is faintly known or forgotten.

So long as the people are marginalized and deprived “liberty and justice’’, they will stand to the occasion in demand for change. So long as Liberians continue to be suppressed economically while other foreign monopoly capitals lead the national economy, the masses will rise up again and will be better prepared than before.

As history progresses, the people are learning and are getting stronger. They are following with keen eyes and opened ears certain happenings as the country draws up to elections. They lost the opportunity to show their distaste with the regime through PATEL failed strike action.

But they would not allow their elections to be manipulated against their democratic wishes to continue the circle of exploitation and suppression and provide safe haven for corrupt officials.

If anything goes wrong, as the reading of happenings seems to be revealing could happen, this could be the moment when the masses of Liberians will make that decisive march to Zion!

Ivor S. Moore, Contributing Writer
mooreivor@gmail.com

Finally, Speaker Alex Tyler has recused himself as presiding over the House’ plenary. What was said to be a “moral fight” against him over criminal charges resulting from the Global Witness’ “The Deceivers” report has ended into jubilancy for the Ant-Tyler bloc headed by Deputy Speaker Hans Baschue, now presiding of plenary with the power of the gavel. It is only time when Tyler is no longer Speaker.

In a press statement delivered on the 1^st of September, Speaker Alex Jenekai Tyler tendered his recusal on grounds that “if my recusal is the ultimate sacrifice that will move our country forward and end the current quagmire, I am herewith recusing myself from presiding over the plenary of the House of Representatives so that the business of the Liberian People can be fully addressed.”

While the members of the Anti- Tyler bloc take the resignation as belated because, prior to it, they had already gotten the support of the Executive in a controversial letter, the Senate somehow, and arguably the Judiciary by its refusal to render opinion on the matter despite its constitutional power as final arbiter of law, they also see it as the final conceding of Tyler to their “moral victory.”

The means by which it was done is not important because, for them, “the end justifies the means.”

Now modalities are being fashioned to submit the public into believing that the House of Representative is now cleansed from all infirmities.

Friendly, or rather sponsored, media outlets are beginning to purvey for public consumption that the impasse which affected the entire functioning of the state has come to a logical conclusion. The country is sailing save. The exorcism has proven effective.  

Loss of National Moral Compass

Like the African adage which says ‘when you pull rope, the rope will pull bush,’ the so-called moral fight has only drawn the public attention to a deepening moral bankruptcy which has evaded the entire government apparatus, stripped it of every flesh, and  left it as a mere skeletal posting as a scarecrow dressed in  coat.

The people of Liberia, minus the minority sycophants, are not buying into the coloration of lies that things are okay, and that the recusal of Alex Tyler as presiding of the House’s plenary is the point of departure for the restoration of moral order in the House and stability of the country. There has been no order before and neither is there order now. The value system of the state from time in memorial has been shrouded in immorality.

Whatever prevents the decent governance of the state, be it corruption, selfish internal fights or other forms of backwardness characteristic of micro-nationalists, against the common good, is unacceptable and a degradation of morality.  Morality, in its truest sense, is nothing short of respect of the trust of others, or in this case, the respect of the trust reposed by the people in their leaders.

All that the situation has done is to awaken the consciousness of the people to the reality behind the lies being distributed.  They are now getting to see things like never before. Everything is like a movie right before their eyes and the scenes are solving the puzzles as each passes before their eyes.

The people are now seeing the underlying factors behind the report and its resultant criminal proceeding which triggered a group of lawmakers to signing a resolution, highly and shamefully plagiarized of America’s Declaration of Independence, calling for Alex Tyler to recuse himself as presiding on “moral grounds” until his case can be arbitrated.

They now vividly understand why the struggle reached to the extremes of pro and anti-Tyler blocs with each presenting its own presiding and claiming to be legitimate.

For her part in this whole dramatic farce, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf reveals a two-faced personality like a symbolic apocalyptic beast. Pro government national and international wires are painting a picture of a president who finally is living up to her promise to fighting corruption which, according to her, has morphed from being public enemy number one to a feared vampire sucking the lifeblood of the country. Like a Hollywood movie, she is painted as wearing the cross only which can keep the vampire away.

Like Santa Clause distributing Christmas gifts to certain children he deems it necessary, the Nobel Laureate portrays a second face of a benevolent president, giving July 26 independence gifts of US 5000 dollars to representatives of the Anti-Tyler bloc or those who had not taken a definite side.

Representative Wolleh revealed that as a precondition to receiving the kind gesture, he was fooled into affixing his signature onto a list which he later realized was meant for a resolution calling for the recusal of Alex Tyler as speaker, thus causing him to withdraw his signature from the list.

The ruling Unity Party of which the Speaker had been a member before his resignation and establishment of another political party, totally blind to what is happening, has averred that its former party stalwart has lost his legitimacy, the confidence of his colleagues and the public trust; therefore, it supports a change in the House of Representative. 

In another scene, leading opposition institutions and personalities are casting their lot with the majority bloc. 

For its part, the Supreme Court of Liberia, constitutionally established as the final arbiter of law in Liberia, elected to have no opinion on the matter leaving everything to jungle justice where only the fittest survive. The final arbiter of law as established by the Liberian constitution elected to abstain from adjudicating a crisis which radiated its paralyses across the entire operation of the government and brought the country at stand still.

Behind the lies that Tyler’s serving as presiding was wholly and solely the blockade to the stability and progressive march of the state, his recusal seems far from securing a functional government in the interest of the people. Neither has it stopped the Legislature from engaging into bad concessioning and the Executive affixing its signature.

Another scene has revealed the unholy marriage between international capitalist monopoly and the reactionary bourgeoisie in leadership. This has resulted into the flooding of foreign banks in the country and entering of bad concessions in favor of the behemoths representing the former and with little token given to the latter at the detriment of the people and posterity. This only confirms the neocolonial question raised by immortal revolutionaries such Nkrumah, Toure, Cabral, Fanon and Nyerere.

There is the flashback of another Global Witness report which praised Christopher Neyor, then CEO of NOCAL, as a reformer only to be sacked by the president and replaced with a plastic engineer. Under the new leadership whose Board chair from the beginning was the “beloved Robert Sirleaf”, the National Oil Company of Liberia has gone down the drainage.

There is also former Christiana Tah, then Justice Minister, resigning on grounds that her boss interfered with the operations of the ministry in the dispensing of justice.

But worst of all, there is the poverty of the people, their mass appearances around the country, especially the capital Monrovia, as streets sellers, store sweepers, marketers, house maids, rubber tappers, all living from hand to mouth.

The fight against Alex Tyler, as all evidences have demonstrated, is a mere show of a dissident who has fallen off with senior elements in their opportunistic union for his wanting to be master of the game. It is a clever attempt to further the tendency of backwardness which Tyler was crumbling for his own interest.

The Tyler question is just a tip of the iceberg. Better still it is just a diversion from the actuality, a scapegoating venture. The so-called victory of the majority bloc is just a thin lid placed over the fetidness in the union.  The entire government is rotten to the core!

The quest for liberty and justice has been betrayed. Indeed, the moral compass of the state is lost.

Land of Liberty at Lost  

Unfortunately, the so-called seed of stability was sowed on rock. There is neither soil nor nutrients to germinate it. The alleged save sailing of the country has reached a crepuscule. The sun has gone down the horizon and the bleak of darkness is setting in. Amidst the shouting of the jubilations is the subtle awakening sound of whirlwind stirring the wave, signalizing danger even to the brave.

In the Christian Bible we find these scaring words in the 18^th chapter of Revolution

“Babylon is falling-that great city is fallen! She has become a home of demons. She is a hideout of every foul spirit, a hideout for every foul vulture and every foul and dreadful animal. For all, the nations have fallen because of the wine of her passionate immorality. The kings of the world have committed adultery with her. Because of her desire for extravagant luxury, the merchants of the world have grown rich.”

This is the exact characterization of the state of affairs in Liberia. The entire government has been an opportunistic union of individuals getting drunk in the immoralities of corruption and other backward practices. Politicians, business men, and clerics are all playing to the political harlotry.

They are either directly engaged or contribute by their tolerance and refusal to speak out. Corruption is the chief harlot wearing scarlet dress and sitting on a scarlet beast-confused to be the harlot her self- and holding in her hand “a gold goblet full of obscenities and the impurities of her immorality.”

The state is no longer the state of the people. It is a party of political drunkenness and orgies.  This cannot represent the “land of liberty, and justice for all”. History has decreed its “mene mene tekel parsin on the entire government.” Doomsdom is right in the backyard. What is left of the government except a skeletal?

Only Port of Safety

The anti-Tyler bloc illegitimately forced Tyler to recuse himself, a mean by which can be used legitimately by the people to save the entire country from its dangerous sailing without a moral compass.

Egypt under Mubakarak and Morsi faced similar crisis. Under them, the government had lost its touch with the people. It had become the instrument of exploitation and the distributor of poverty and miseries.

But the people of Egypt made a stampede against the prevailing injustices. In the first and second Egyptian Revolutions, they demonstrated to the world that power of the state is inherent in the people and that the people cannot forever endure marginalization. They also sent a message to the world that change can be effected without heavy weaponry but the resolved of the masses unrelentingly moving to take charge of their destiny.

The crisis in Liberia has shown that there is no solution except the people, in their mass, demanding the government to step down or recuse itself of power as it has lost every quality of being a government. The social contract has been betrayed. The call to come redeem Liberia is alarming.

Like in Egypt and elsewhere, the state of the moral crisis in Liberia has rendered the government incapable of finding solution. But how can the very cause of the problem fathom a solution which would mean supporting its own demise?

In reality, the government is nothing but an opportunistic union. Every fragment is a unique part of the hold, serving for the collective interest of exploitation.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to have an opinion in the fracas at the Legislature, unknowingly, was admittance to the revolutionary truism that a moral national crisis far exceeds the jurisdiction of the highest constitutional body.

Only the people and the people alone can save the day. They have the power, which exceeds the constitution, to call for the recusal of the entire government. They can use the power of revolution to rescue themselves the lost ship of state. In the midst of the loss of moral compass, revolution is the only port of safety that the people can cling on to.

The action of the people to call for the recusal of the government, at the requirement of their happiness, cannot be termed an act of treason or sedition.  First and foremost, the people reserve a constitution far above the constitution of the government whose functions are employed in times like these. View from another angle, because the “government is for the people, by the people and of the people”, if the people calling for the recusal of the government is said to be seditious and treasonous, then it is treason and sedition against themselves, to which there can be no other judge other than the people themselves. And the will of the people is the sanction of God.

There is no time to sit supinely and cling to the false hope that things will be okay.  Martin Luther had long destroyed “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism”. Patrick Henry confined hope to its illusionary cave long ago. Every time wasted is an opportunity for more exploitation.

The Hot Pepper Newspaper fashioned the best reasons for the people’s action in one of its headlines which read: “No Honor Among Thieves.”

It is hard times like these that the people make their revolutionary entry on the stage of history.

Indeed, history has proven times without counting that only the people’s revolution can bring moral cleansing full redemption. Only such can replace the value system of backwardness with one based on social justice and peace. 

All social changes or social revolutions in history, especially the recent the Egyptian Revolution, were informed by contradictions within society. In these conditions, people fought to better their lot or what one may call their material condition from entanglements. The development (change) psychology bearing on the people’s conscience at objective times in their lives precipitate their move for social change (progress or development).

 Allan Woods puts its better in one of his masterpieces:

“However of certain periods great events force men and women to question their old beliefs and assumptions. They are jolted out of the old supine, apathetic indifference and forced to come to terms with reality. In such periods consciousness can change very rapidly.

That is what revolution is. Just as the tectonic plates, having moved too slowly, compensate by a violent earthquake, so the lagging of consciousness behind events is compensated by sudden change in the psychology of the masses. We have seen this process in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain and Greece. Tomorrow we will see it in Britain, France and the United States.”

The disenchantments among the Liberian masses are symptomatic of this revolutionary spirit. They too are beginning to learn faster than ever. They are beginning to question the decadence of the system, its corruptibility and sheer abandonment of the interest of the state and its people.

Giving the state of things, analysts are claiming that it is only a matter of time when this revolutionary force gets matured and the Liberian people stand up to say enough is enough.

If these analysts truly have foresights like Jewish priests then it is possible the people will soon form themselves into a mass revolutionary movement. They would begin establishing revolutionary committees in every county, district, city, town and village and bringing them under a revolutionary command council.

Like their Egyptians counterparts, one can only wonder when the people would be marching to their Tahrir Square to bring an end to bureaucratic rule based on exploitation and begin the expropriation of banks and other corporations to be placed “under a democratic workers control.”

It is only a matter of time when the clock ticks ready and a populist government of the people, for the people and by the people would be established and the Lone Star flag, alongside the banner of the revolution with the inscription of “liberty and justice for all”, is waved unfurl, proclaiming to the world the true “birth of Africa sons and sires, the birth of liberty.”

When that time comes, who dare not heed to the revolutionary battle hymn, especially at the trumpeting of this line:

 “Then forward sons of freedom march, defend the sacred heritage….”

About the Author:

Ivor S. Moore is a young writer, a revolutionary nationalist and a Pan Africanist in the traditions of the Liberian Progressive Class and the African Liberation Immortals. He is a member of the Movement for Social Democratic Alternative (MOSODA) and studies economics and political science at the University of Liberia where he serves as a militant of the Vanguard Students Unification Party. 0777454112, 0880183280, mooreivor@gmail.com