Unity Party (UP) Standard Bearer, Joseph N. Boakai, winner of the 2023 presidential and legislative elections, has assiduous tasks to perform, beginning January 2024, in order to address Liberians’ burning wishes; writes Ojuku Silver-tongue Kangar, Jr.
In the heart of Soul Clinic’s community market, the expectation of a potato greens vendor, Lorpu Flomo, 48, a single parent with five children and three grandchildren, is huge.
She said, as a tenant and a widow, who solely depends on the sale of potato greens to feed her children, pay rent and school fees, hardship has ripped Liberians nationwide, causing citizens to be beggars and unable to provide for their household.
“I want Joseph Boakai to reduce rice price, provide jobs for our children to work to help us,” Lorpu said, sitting before her market the whole day without customers.
She blamed the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC)-led administration for the unfavourable economic situation, which she said has reduced parents and guardians to perform their domestic duty for their children, adding that only two of her three boys are schooling, while her two girls are not in school.
“Let Joseph Boakai bring companies so that people can work and provide jobs for common people like us,” she said. “When jobs and money are in the country, I can wash people’s clothes to support my children.”
President-elect Boakai, who was declared winner of the run-off election on November 20, 2023 by the National Election Commission’s Davidetta Brown-Lansannah, faces challenges from the Liberian electorate who voted for him and he unseated President George M. Weah of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC). President-elect Boakai received 814,481 votes, constituting 50.64%, while President Weah, 793,914, constituting 49.36%.
According to Liberians, he is compelled to enforce the justice system, upgrade the education sector, audit the out-going administration, improve the economy, and bring to book perpetrators who killed the auditors and other Liberians in cold blood and went unpunished.
With the United Nations revelation that Liberia is among the least developed countries globally, with limited infrastructure, a poor healthcare system and corruption plaguing the nation for decades, President-elect Boakai is challenged in several ways to address Liberians’ needs, miraculously.
To address these problems require significant funds, as the country’s fiscal space is severely limited for significant investments in social infrastructure and economic stimulus projects that would stimulate the economy and create jobs.
Liberia, Africa’s oldest independence state, is noted as a mineral-rich country, with more than half of the country’s population–5.2 million people, according to the most recent census–living below the poverty line, with significant numbers lacking access to education, basic infrastructure like electricity, safe drinking water and well-managed sanitation system, according to the World Bank.
With these problems, justice dispensation is paramount for foreign partners to trust Liberia’s justice system and invest, but several citizens blame the CDC-led government for running a friendship administration—giving impunity to culprits.
One of these citizens is Marthalyn L. Kieh, who squarely blames the President Weah administration for taking no action against the murderers of the four auditors, Princess Copper, and others. She said she is eager for President-elect Boakai to go the extra mile in justice dispensation for every Liberian, especially the voiceless and the downtrodden masses.
“My expectations from the President-elect are lot of things. The first thing I want Unity Party to do is to fight drugs and finish it or minimize it, persecute those who killed our people. Death rate is high in the CDC government, and no one is taken to justice,” Kieh said. “The President often says we will see what to do, and nothing happens when someone is killed.”
In the same manner, Evans K. Kamara, wants the Unity Party government in 2024 to clampdown on illicit drug dealers and importers, adjudicate those who killed Liberian professional labourers in cold blood for being patriotic to the country and to their ethics.
“My sister Prince Cooper’s death went like that, without justice. The government accepted money from the person who killed my sister and beat on us when we demanded for justice,” she said with a dim eye. “And the government lied that my sister had tuberculosis. Princess never had tuberculosis and any sickness.”
With Liberia being among the least developed countries in the world, the government’s debt service in 2022 was US$151 million, of which nearly half is external debt service, according to the IMF’s 2022 Article IV Consultation and Fourth Review of the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement.
The amount exceeds the funding allocated to the health sector, which was US$78.4 million, agriculture, US$7.3 million, infrastructure and basic service, US$70.5 million, social development services sector, US$24.3 million, and security and rule of law, US$102 million.
However, according to budget analyst, from 2018 to 2023 shows that Liberia has spent more than US$327 million on servicing debt, with the amount expected to grow in the coming years.
In 2021, the total public debt reached US$1.86 billion, up from US$1.78 billion in 2020. Mostly, the amount increased to US$2.03 billion at the end of December 2022. Of the US$2.03 billion, domestic debt constituted about US$896.68 million (44.15%), while the external component of the total debt stock constituted about US$1.13 billion (55.85%), according to the Liberian government’s 2022 annual public debt management report.
President-elect Boakai is coming to power when the world’s economy is challenged: plagued by Covid-19, current wars, Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestine, and so on.
In 2017, President Weah won 14 counties out of 15, becoming Liberia’s 25th President with the mantra, “Change For Hope”, and later “Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development”, to improve Liberians’ livelihood, but it went the opposite by pinning Liberians to the ground of deprivation and denial, according to several partisans of the Unity Party.
With the slogan, “Rescue Mission Team”, President-elect Boakai has promised Liberians that he will address agriculture, roads, education, sanitation and transportation, health, among others.
As rescuer, Liberians expect miracles so that they can recover their misfortunes which they said the CDC-led government meted against them for six years, making them eager to end 2023 sooner so that they enter 2024 and inaugurate their President-elect.
As illicit drug is the society woe, causing the youthful population to be useless and criminally inclined to satisfy their habits, the President-elect must empower the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA) and other security apparatuses to combat and minimize its flow in the society.
“People cannot go out and stay out late due to drug addicts looking for what they have not lost. “Kush” especially is spoiling our children. Let this government go and Boakai take over and clean our society,” Kieh said.