Grand Kru County’s district #2 Representative and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Jonathan Fonati Koffa, has taken on the task to dissect the Coalition for Democratic Change’s “Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development” from a sociological perspective, arguably the first of its kind from any member of the ruling establishment since the inception of the Weah-led government in a public forum.
Speaking on the theme, “President Weah’s Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development” at the CDC-USA Chapter’s inauguration ceremony recently, Representative Kofa said the phrase is associated with the economic paradigm shift in Liberia, but as that was in the purview of the economic experts, he took on the topic from a sociological perspective, emphasizing on “Political Economy, Value, Price and Profit”.
Representative Koffa said the pro-poor agenda has its backdrop in the miserable failure of the nation’s over 170 years of Capitalism. He described Liberia as a consumption society that barely produce anything and, as a result, the economy is organized in such a way that majority of its foreign exchange goes toward buying rice and consumables, and yet past governments continued on the failed model which has created masses of poor Liberians for so many years. “There will be many who will have other explanations for why Liberians are poor: Neo Colonialism, corruption, etc., but there was always the need to find a solution.
In 2018 when they took over, he said President Weah and the CDC launched the pro-poor agenda, which sociologically means they were no longer looking to create middle class, but to firstly equalize and stabilize the society.
He quoted two fundamental American politicians to give the sociological perspective of what the pro-poor agenda means: John F. Kenney, who said, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich”; and Ronald Reagan, who said, “How can you love your country and not love your countrymen, and in loving them reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they are sick and produce enough incentive to make them equal in fact and not just in theory.”
He emphasized that in those two statements lies the fundamental basis of the sociological aspect of the pro-poor agenda. According to him, the CDC could not continue with a Liberia where so many of the people were poor, but sought to do several things: massive intervention on behalf of the poor to be able take care of some fundamental issues of life, such as the construction of the largest pro-poor housing in the history of the nation, with an example on the over 800 pro-poor housing units built in his home, Grand Kru County, to be given to poor people for free; the introduction of free tuition in public universities ease the burden on students and struggling parents; introduction of a cash transfer program for rural women and children; the construction of the first-ever military hospital in the country to serve the veterans free of charge; provision of outboard motors to artisanal fishermen to enable them to produce more fish. He also mentioned the stride in topping the national budget by US$200 million.