PRESS
RELEASE
Dated:
August 28, 2014
As we transitioned
from July to August in the mist of our regional attack by Ebola my mind and
heart pondered over Africa's future as follows:
1. Liberia today still
stands as the model of independence in Africa, under the banner of
democracy; yet we are substantially a failed state transitioning through a
fragile position back towards growth and development. As we attempted to
celebrate July 26 this year while being under attack by Ebola, I asked myself
"Why Lord, why do we find ourselves in this situation on our
167th anniversary as a nation build on Christian principles?"
2. On August 6th our
government had to declare a state of emergency due to the manner in which Ebola
was still spreading without control. As i listened to the news and read the
local papers the following thoughts came to my mind which I wish to share with
my follow citizens and my beloved President:
A. It appears we the
Liberian people have lost confidence in our government's ability and
capacity to protect us from this plague and to ultimately resolve the problems
it has created for national peace, security and social economic development.
B. This is clearly seen
through public opinions expressed on the radios,
written in the various newspapers,
the Internet and in various community discussion groups I have
visited.
C1. This lack of
confidence is further validated internally by:
- · The slow response time of our various rapid response units (RRU) or emergency task force units
- · The lack of clear public information from the government on the status of our nation-state relative to their war against EBOLA:
-
They say $12 million dollars of public funds[1] has been spent from April
to June in the Ebola fight with another $21M being approved by the Legislature,
yet the public sees no evidence of such expenditure.
-
The minister of
information simply talks and accuses others of acting bad to us but doesn’t
provide evidence to support the good that government is doing, while the death
toll continues to rise.
- · The International community's response to our state of emergency:
-
Many nations have asked
their citizens to leave Liberia,
-
Some countries have closed their bounder with
us for fear of continued spreading of the virus to their nations.
-
Others still seek to
disengage economically from us.
C2. And externally by
the following facts:
· The Ivory
Coast government , our neighbor on the SE responded
immediately to the plague and have been able to protect their citizens from
this virus
·
The Nigerian government,
who we infected, has also been able to bring the problem under control within a
reasonable time span with minimal loss of life.
·
The fact that we have
the highest incident report and death toll amongst the
three countries affected, coupled with our having pre-notice of the
problem through a two phase attack, reinforces and justifies Liberia's lack of
confidence in its leadership.
D1. In summary there is
clear justification for the Liberian citizen's to have lost confidence in their
government. This government has handled this unprecedented attack inefficiently.
D2. Having said this, we
need to realize Madam Sirleaf’s Unity party government was democratically
elected by all Liberian citizens. They represent our collective choice of
leadership as citizens; therefore, we too have a responsibility to support them
with prayers and advise them in our diverse professional ways for the sake of
the nation-state. This is the meaning of true patriotism.
D3. Unlike the war years
when we had un-democratically elected governments forced upon us or the pre-war
years when we had quasi-democratic governments which we choice to violently
remove from power; this government is our government and our only sane
responsibility is to peacefully support and advise until the expected results
are achieved or we have another opportunity to transfer our political power to a
new team in 2017.
E. In keeping with my
own advice to fellow citizens I have written this article to give my support
and professional advice to Madam Sirleaf and her government as follows:
E1. You have clearly
reached an impasse in fighting this war against Ebola. You are thus left with
three choices as our government:
- · Continue business as usual (BAU).
- · Change strategy based on a current assessment of lessons learned.
- · Turnover the battle to higher authority as in AU or UN sponsored international experts. We did this after the civil crisis with GMAP.
G. Allow me at this time to share my opinion
with you regarding the first choice:
G1. Business as usual (BAU):
I predict this will clearly lead to greater dead and suffering for our
citizens. Eventually economic chaos will set in and public violence will ensure
from the social-economic disorder. This in itself is a clear sign of political
instability and our return to being a failed state.
G2. I say this because
earlier this month Madam President you announce your disappointment with the
MOH’s ability to handle the crisis; in fact, they confessed their inability due
to lack of resources to handle the situation.
G3. As a result you publicly proclaimed the establishment of a special task force headed by
yourself and requested all citizens and organizations to mobilize and support
this effort.
G4. By August 6, 2014, the problem continued to
escalate out of control where you had to declare a national state of emergency
and impose a curfew for our protection. All citizens joined in prayer for the
nation and reached out in public education against the virus wherever they
could. But with all these measures the death rate continued to climb until
Liberia became the nation with the highest death rate and case load of Ebola in
the region.
G5. The virus spread from 5 counties to currently
almost all counties. We heard on the radio and read in the newspapers of government’s
inability to handle the problem. We even heard of government agencies burying
45 plus bodies in a community swam without proper coverage. Just yesterday
(August 27, 2014) three weeks after that story, we heard that domestic dogs were
eating the bodies and dying.
G6. As a common citizen
I have no way of validating all of this public information; however I expect to hear from my government, the
truth and to keep me updated on their progress towards saving our lives;
instead I continue to hear of how my government is shooting and killing
innocent children in a dilapidated community and I hear of our Minister of
Information and Task force committee chairs blasting internationals for being
insensitive to our situation, instead of doing their job by informing us of the
positive results and challenges they are experiencing.
G6. Only with such clear,
timely and informative public information can we expect citizens who love this
nation to have confidence in their government and shy away from demanding
resignations and violent removals.
G7. In summary Madam
President, please have your task force
establish a website to keep us abreast of your activities as you lead this
war against our deadliest historic enemy EBOLA.
G8. I recommend the following information to
be posted and updated regularly on this website just as we did for elections:
·
Show us the information
you have gain from efforts made to trace those who have been infected with the
virus. This information should be shown on national, county and community maps
with data reference in tables. This incident
database report will assist government and partners in optimally allocating
scares resources and thus saving the most lives.
·
Show us natural resource data as follows:
·
How many ambulances have been purchased or
received via donations, where are they assigned, who donated. Publish key
information of responsible parties of these public resources.
·
How many ER Units have been set up throughout
the country with qualified staff? Where
are they located? Publish their names, addresses, donors and emergency numbers
to call for their services.
·
Determine how many and what type of other resources
you need[2] and seek support from national
& international partners. Don’t just cry out for help without telling
people what type of help we need. This shows insensitivity and incompetence on
the part of government and the citizens who you represent.
·
With this incident and natural resource database
people will not have to ask how government money is being spent. There will be
more natural confidence in government all around. Confidence results from
accountability and transparency not patrimony.
G8. I was informed by an
international doctor, who later resigned and left the county, of how he had
approached our ministry of health during the early days of the crisis about
what was needed to fight this disease. He was simply told “we don’t have the
money”. With this he resigned and left, as he could foresee our future
suffering.
G8.1 Notice how for the
past three years government budgets have been late in passage and progressively
cut in mid-stream of allotment. This two has been a clear sign of incompetency
and insensitivity on the part of government, but we have just endured.
G9. As I think of how
many health workers have died unnecessarily because we lacked the foresight and
leadership to utilize our meager resources for the public good, it pains my
heart. At lease let us declare these citizens as national heroes in the
aftermath of this crisis.
H1. In conclusion: all
deployment of our meager public resources should be done based on a priority need bases. But the priority
need can only be determined from incident
database reports centered on the ideal of the greater good for the greater
number.
H2. Also a monitoring
division needs to be set up for check and balance. Such an intensive task has
space for mistakes. This unit will be responsible to periodically audit all
task force activity and advise you on affairs while keeping the public informed
of responsible parties.
3. My fellow citizens,
let us prayer to God to give us grace, change our negative cultural norms and
to provide wisdom and courage to our leaders.
4. My elected government,
we thank you for your hard work so far but let us renew our commitment to
public service and our motherland.
May God bless our region
and Africa as a whole, as we move towards a greater USA in Africa?
