By Alfred P.B. Kiadii
Karl Marx rightfully observed: ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’
Name-calling and tossing blame is the latest scene in the Liberian trig-comedy, with bizarre cast acting in the theater of the absurd. It is now a comedy of errors as quacks and nobodies are posing as experts on the socio-economic logjam that is wrecking the country, making a complete but trashy mess of economics with unbridled audacity.
You know you are in a dark cave when yellow-bellied nonentities and bottom-feeder of the CDC and the government hurl vulgarities at decent compatriots instead of tackling the crisis that is generating a collective anger among the mass of people. What else can one expect from a party and the government that dismiss competence but embrace incompetence, inadequacy and ignorance?
It is all but clear that the regime is at a cul-de-sac. Under seven months, the Weah regime produces industrial quantities of blunders. A blunder galore and governance at the nadir are apt epithets that best characterize the regime. The whole government is in the state of collective psychosis and
mass hypnosis and thus lost in the middle. Hot air and crude verbiage have been traded with a brand of obfuscation to conceal the stark incompetence of the regime.
Economic sclerosis and political inertia with bubbling effect is the current state of affairs in the homeland and thus the regime is an unknown prisoner of its own incompetence. This is the worst form of imprisonment a body of people can be confronted with. One which is unknown and has high prospect of self-destruction.
The mass of the people have gone full cycle in the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance and thus accepted our analysis that this regime is a political bomb. The reality has changed in the social basses of the party in West Point, New Kru Town, Clara Town, Soniwein, etc. And this was manifested days ago when the people snubbed the so-called pro-poor day—a day set aside for elements of the government to display vulgar wealth to the disillusioned masses.
Now, some blame are placed on the erstwhile government which is a lofty claim to make and this writer shares similar sentiment. However, the current crisis has been exacerbated by the gross incompetence on the part of the current regime which has failed to properly use the tools of governance to assuage the disaster. All the same the government has the machinery of the state to pursue the corrupt cabal of the erstwhile regime. Should we wonder why Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and her supporting cast of plunderers have not been investigated? Should we also wonder why they openly mingle with her
in the day and seek her pieces of advice in camera? Should we also wonder why key loyalists of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf are calling the shots in this government?
Forget about the playacting and mere posturing on the part of certain elements of this government. They will bluster and blather to bamboozle the mass of people about EJS. If it were not so, why the Weah government has refused to constitute a commission of inquiry to probe into matters of the erstwhile regime of Sirleaf as was done by President Julius M. Bio of Sierra Leone against the Koroma government? Truth be told, the Weah government is an architectural design of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She has a stranglehold on the current president. An attempt to go after her Weah will be inviting a macabre conflict which will hasten his political demise.
From the wailing and outburst of the lumpen masses and other declassed elements residing in the jungle of a capital city—Monrovia—it would be correct to conclude that Liberia is gradually getting ripe with revolutionary ferment. All over Monrovia there is a near consensus that the Weah government is a grotesque fraud perpetrated on the people.
But whining and lamentation cannot be the refuge of the masses. The mass of the people, the collective opposition, militant students and all popular democratic forces must be told that these contradictions can only be solved through the conscious class struggle. The class struggle is the motor force of history and it is what must be used to retire this predatory paternalism of a regime.
The Constitution of Liberia is clear that ‘All power is inherent in the people. All free governments are instituted by their authority and for their benefit and they have the right to alter and reform the same when their safety and happiness so require.’ Similarly, Article 17 of Liberia’s Constitution gives the people the right to assemble in order to express their grievances. There can be no better day to expose the government for the fraud which it is than to protest on Independence Day to send a signal to Weah and his band of economic gangsters that it is treading on a backward trajectory.
Against this background, the people must commit themselves to change this despicable reality. An option to remain silent is akin to self-immolation. The other path which calls for them to take action because the plunder orchestrated by this regime is due to their silence. The people must act to indicate that they have a class power in our society. Only went they wake up from their slumber and start to take class action can we carve a collective itinerary which will usher in that glorious era where the nation makes advances in art, culture, technology and engineering because there has been a conscious effort to elevate them!
Liberians of all shades, protest!
Kiadii studies Political Science with emphasis in Public Administration at the University of Liberia. He is the Secretary General of the Movement for Social Democratic Alternative (MOSODA). You can reach him through [email protected].
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/05/11/opinion/president-weah-talks-poor-but-the-2018-2019-draft-budget-acts-rich-pro-poor-or-pro-rich/
