By: Togba-Nah Tipoteh
There are some individuals. Institutions, especially the media, who tell the truth even when they have bullets to their chests. Even when they are molested constantly to take bribes, they refuse to take the bribes. Even when the powers that be owe them a lot of money for publications made, they refuse to take bribes. These individuals and entities, upon their refusal to take bribes, are called enemies of progress when, in fact, the powers that be are the enemies of progress because they act selfishly and not selflessly.
Such selfishness prevails, although the powers that be say that they are against corruption. Definitely, bribery is a form of corruption. The powers that be promote corruption, although they say that corruption is the number one enemy of the State. This declaration is something that the State and the people agree upon. But the people do not trust the State because of the bad and, therefore, non-credible record of the State. Whenever a person or an institution fails to tell the truth, that person and institution become bad and non-credible, respectively.
This lack of truth-telling is so bad to the extent that it leads to the loss of lives. Remember the lies told to the effect that there was no rebel activity at the Ivoirean-Liberian border. These lies led to the Civil War in Liberia. We know that this war took the lives of at least 300,000 people and injured many more people, not forgetting the people who got displaced. It is due to the brutality of the civil war in Liberia that the people of Liberia have declared: We Want Peace! No More War!
The credibility of the declaration of the people of Liberia is seen clearly when they say that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction. This is the main problem in Liberia. This problem is the problem of poverty generation. The way out of this problem is the promotion of poverty alleviation. Take a look at how our children continue to sit on the bare ground when Liberia has at least 200 of the best log species in the world. Local production would mean local sawmills. education, training, ownership, employment, production, income generation, lower prices with more local production, poverty alleviation and violence prevention. The movement away from the production for export system to the production for local production system would prevent poverty generation and promote poverty alleviation. The way to promote poverty alleviation is to transform the prevailing unfair electoral system into an enduring fair electoral system.
The way to transform the prevailing unfair electoral system is to end the corruption in the electoral system that is supervised by the National Elections Commission (NEC) of Liberia. The only way to transform the unfair electoral system in Liberia is to get persons with good records elected to bring in the system of Justice, the ingredient for Peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country.
Fortunately, the people who love Liberia have found out the way to solve the problem of poverty and its attendant problem of violence. The solution is in the raising of awareness in ways that motivate the people to take actions within the Rule of Law to transform the prevailing unfair electoral system into the enduring fair electoral system.
This transformation is seen in the non-re-election of almost all of the National Legislators from the 52nd, 53rd and 54th National Legislatures who wanted to be re-elected. This trend is highly likely to continue in the forthcoming elections. Furthermore, this transformation is clearly seen in the results of the October 10, 2023, election where 76.86% of the voting age population, a world record, voted. All of this progress happened because of the awareness raising by the people who love Liberia.
This trend is continuing! Liberia is on the way to the enduring right, which is directly from the prevailing wrong direction. The people who know book but do not have sense continue to talk plenty but do nothing to transform the prevailing system. They are just looking for jobs and promoting the bad system. They talk plenty but do not walk the talk. Take a look at the evidence: the youth, men, women, and the elderly are becoming convinced through the awareness raising, and this is clearly seen in the world record-setting voting that took place on October 10, 2023, in Liberia. Praise for this election continues to flow locally and globally.
