With the various schemes being adopted to weed out individuals from remaining in their legally tenured positions, there are strong indications that in the more than 30 days of Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s administration the administration may continue to go all out to ensure that none of those in tenured positions end their terms–just as concerns are being mounted by citizens to ascertain the fate of the rule of law under this dispensation.
What had earlier sneaked out as mere rumor: that the President had perfected moves to evict those whose terms were not affected by the transitional act of losing their positions because they had set terms as per the law and which related to their various positions, soon became open to the public as the President became to announce nominations to those positions that were tenured.
It was believed that the President came under severe pressure to forcibly remove those affected without any contemplation of compensation as required by law when it became clear that the demand for jobs to satisfy his supporters could not be met, thus he was said to have succumbed and “knowingly appointed people to places he should not have done”.
In some cases, it started with the use of thugs and self-declared disenchanted workers at some institutions to affect the forcible removal of the targeted persons. Prof. Wilson K. Tarpeh, then Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), became the first victim of such a scheme when some employees under the guise of “protecting the mandate and act that established the EPA” organized a protest that successfully eased him out, and in his place, President Boakai announced the nomination of Dr. Emmanuel Urey Yakpawulo as Acting Executive Director.
Encouraged by what happened at the EPA, some workers at the National Fishery and Aquaculture Authority (NaFAA) started their own attacks on the Director General, Emma Metieh Glassco, with demonstration and demanding her removal as well.
However, they were not so lucky as their plans failed after several other workers, including beneficiaries of her outreach program to empower Liberian business women,stoutly stood their ground and resisted such unlawful assembly and the resort to violence to cause for the dismissal of the head of one of the thriving institutions in the country without cause.
President Boakai in between made several appointments at various entities without regard to the law that protected their positions. The entire board at the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) was removed and replaced with supporters of the President who campaigned for him during the 2023 general elections, the effort the President made to reward them to such an important board.
Though they challenged their removal at the Supreme Court and the apex court has placed a stay notice on the execution of the removal, the government has been making frantic moves to ensure that they are not returned to their positions.
One of the tactics is to link tenured individuals to violating the code of conduct which spells out that persons in some positions should not actively get involved in partisan politics. It was alleged that members of the board were actively involved in campaigning for former President George Manneh Weah and his CDC during the just concluded 2023 general election.
Pundits believe that whether the actions are the direct mandate of President Boakai or not seems to be immaterial for now as “these coordinated attacks are not veiled”.
As the moves against tenure positions intensifies, there are reports that the Director General of the Financial Intelligence Agency, Stanley S. Ford, may be the next target as stories are planted in some papers to link him to mismanagement of public funds and the “violation of the code of conduct”.
Is it by coincidence that only tenured officials have been in the limelight over the first days of this Presidency?
Sources are said to be currently working on the full details of what is unfolding at the FIA.