DR. TOGBA NAH TIPOTEH, ONE OF LIBERIA’S GREAT INTELLECTUALS REFLECTS
FacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedInStumbleUponTumblrPinterestRedditVKontakteOdnoklassnikiPocket
As we are in the 2018/2019 Season, let me wish for all the People of Liberia a Happy New Year. Any New Year can only be happy for you when your mistakes are recognized and corrected so that they are not repeated in the New Year. Mistakes can only be recognized and corrected when you criticize yourself and when another person criticizes you so that you can understand and correct the mistakes that you are making. Whenever you understand and correct the mistakes that you are making, you win because you are helping to make not only yourself better but also to make other persons better. Winning is not about getting a title because many persons get titles and do not correct their mistakes. Whenever you correct your mistakes and get a title in the process, then you win and become a winner.
Let us try to become winners. Let me start with myself. For half a century, I have been working to convince myself and as many other persons as possible about the fact that God blesses the People of Liberia. When the People of Liberia use the blessings of God, then they become winners. My working with the People mainly through Susukuu, the 47 years old poverty-alleviation NGO and the 45 years old Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA), has produced some successes, as seen in the longstanding and widespread peaceful mass action for justice, the ending of the Civil War
and the ending of the Ebola epidemic. However, this work must continue because nearly all Liberians remain poor and with this longstanding and widespread poverty, especially the among young people, poverty-driven frustration leads to wrong decision-making and violence. This frustration is even rising because national decision-makers continue to make promises that cannot be met, but expectations keep rising with the attendant frustration. The promises cannot be met because longstanding and widespread corruption has turned into a vampire, sucking up at least half of the national budget, during donor acquiescence and fatigue.
This wrong decision-making from the family level to the local level to the national level is seen in the lack of appreciation of the role of human resources, the number one asset. Instead, the national decision–makers view money resources as the number one asset. Give any dishonest person a billion dollars and give any honest person one thousand dollars, the honest person will do far better for Liberia than the dishonest person. As there is no merit system in Liberia’s national decision-making, amid longstanding and widespread corruption and almost all the cases from the integrity institutions remaining unattended to, in terms of prosecution,there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This absence of the merit system continues to place emphasis on the domination of the poverty-generating production of natural resources for export. In this dominant production system, national decision-making adds value to the production in foreign countries at the expense of the production in Liberia. This is precisely why Liberia is compelled to take the prices of the exported natural resources and pay the prices of the imported products made abroad from Liberia’s exported natural resources.
Many people are wondering why the People’s Republic of China continues to have high economic growth rates with falling mass poverty, especially while the United States of America, the world’s biggest economy and other industrialized economies were struggling to get positive economic growth rates after the global financial crisis of 2008, the worst financial crisis since the great depression of the 1930s. China continues to do far better because of the emphasis placed on value addition on the production in China, where the poverty rate has declined from 75 per cent to less than 5 per cent in the past 40 years of the Opening-Up of China and China is now the world’s second largest economy. China places value addition on local production, as seen in the manufacturing portion of the gross domestic product of China, which, at over 30 per cent, is the largest in the world. China is now the second largest economy in the world. This puts China in the position to influence the prices of what is sold to others by China and what is bought from others by China. Imagine that forty years ago, the gross domestic product per person for China was less than that for Liberia!
This growth without development experience for Liberia is not surprising when we observe that education in Liberia is a MESS. Education in Liberia is a MESS because it is western or American and not Liberian. Education in Liberia is based on the understanding of American culture rather than on the understanding of Liberian culture. Therefore, it is impossible to understand
Hopefully, what is happening in the United States of America now will help national decision-makers in Liberia to think about making a “U-Turn”. Reference here is being made to many wrong decisions that are being made in the USA, especially the decision to build a Wall at the border between the USA and Mexico to keep refugees away from entering the USA. This United States of America government should know that the previous version of the same government played the main role in the breaking up of the Berlin Wall that led the Late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to make the expression “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner in the German language) when he visited Berlin. Now, the USA government is looking for USD5.1 billion to build the Wall, as the government has shut down because the money is not forthcoming and the USA Stock Market just had its worst Christmas Eve crash since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as the Dow Jones index fell by 650 points. My only tweet to date remains instructive: The United States of America was a symphony orchestra called democracy; now, I hear only one “Trump-et”.
There are Liberians who managed to acquire education that helps them to understand and solve Liberia’s problems. However, without a merit system in determining the choice of public personnel, there is the situation in Liberia where a carpenter is often chosen to do the job of an auto mechanic. In this non-merit system, personalization prevails above institutionalization, as seen in the decision by the House of Senate of Liberia to confirm a senior government official who does not know the definition of the job assigned to the official. Now, when the first branch of the government engages in such wrong decision-making, what can be expected from the other branches of government?
The poverty-oriented hardships with their violent-content continue; but ways must find to prevent them continuing in order to save Liberia and make Liberia a better place for all of us to live in. The solution to the hardships is not violence. The solution to the hardships is the election of persons who have public records of working in the interest of poor people by helping the poor people to help themselves. This election can happen only through a fair election process. But the election process in Liberia remains unfair. Right now, the Chairman of the National Elections Commission (NEC) is a citizen of the United States of America, a situation that is in violation of the Constitution of Liberia. Additionally, NEC has no credible voter registration role, as the NEC Chairman took a unilateral and illegal decision indicating that a voter registration role was necessary for voting. NEC Commissioner Jonathan Weedor was the only NEC Commissioner who disagreed with the NEC Commissioner.
The struggle to end Ebola teaches us that the main guarantee now for saving Liberia and moving Liberia forward for the better is Community Ownership. When communities around Liberia took ownership of the anti-Ebola process, then we could see the candle at the end of the tunnel and the Ebola virus was pushed into the dustbin of history. This push only took place to end the Ebola epidemic when the anti-Ebola message was carried by HONEST persons! So, let me call upon the HONEST People of Liberia to stand up and work together to let the Rule of Law prevails, as the Lone Star stands forever! All hail Liberia, all hail!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Economist, Educator and Politician; Board Chairperson of Susukuu & Founding Leader of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA).
"Togba-Nah Tipoteh is a rare breed of human being who you don’t see quite often in Liberia. He’s principled, disciplined, smart, humble, uncorrupt and consistent in his politics, the way he lives his life, and the seriousness he has shown since he arrived in Liberia in the early 70s, to contribute to the