Liberia News: ‘LEADERS IGNORE PROMISES ONCE IN POWER’

Liberia-African leaders turn their backs on fabulous campaign promises made to the masses during electoral processes, including commitment to fight corruption to the core, upon resuming power, Cllr. Tiawon Gongloe, a renowned human rights lawyer and politician has asserted in a speech that focused on the perils of corruption to society.

“Every politician in Africa, both the ruling party and the opposition party speak about fighting corruption during election time. On inauguration day, a whole paragraph and sometimes an entire speech page dwells on the determination to fight corruption,” Cllr. Gongloe, a former Minister in the erstwhile Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration said, highlighting the deception that often mars the fight for state power.

At a recent Center for Intellectual Exchange (CIEO) at Joint Civil Society Anti-Corruption Awareness Program, he disclosed how governments after governments in most African countries tend to emphasize the fight against corruption as the number one priority on their policy agenda, but would do the opposite or the worst upon taking office.

“However, the evidence has shown that the promise of fighting corruption is only good for the campaign,” he told the gathering of young and firebrand intellectuals committed to changing the narratives of corruption and bad governance in a 177-yr-old independent nation.

According to Cllr. Gongloe, African leaders are in the habit of presenting sugar-coated promises of fighting corruption and changing the lives of citizens, but rather take a far different approach when the opportunity is given to lead.

He recalled that “When African politicians get to power, they put aside their campaign promises about fighting corruption and switch to making excuses. And when they are reminded by civil society and opposition parties, they give excuses. They often say that the reality is different in government than outside government.”

“Yet, as they make these excuses, they and their family and friends live better lives than most people. While those in power and their children eat three times a day, most citizens find it difficult to have one meal daily. While those in power and their families have access to the best medical treatments in their countries and most often out of their countries, a majority of their citizens die from malaria, running stomach, headaches, and other curable and preventable illnesses,” the Liberia People Party standard-bearer in last year’s elections further accentuated.

Cllr. Gongloe is famed for standing against back governance, dictatorship, corruption and anti-democratic tendencies both at home and abroad.

His speech brought out the practically physical conditions of Liberians as a result of bad decisions and policies of government and officials. For example, he pointed out how children of those in power go to the best schools in and out of their countries, the poor majority are out of school, and the few in school attend sub-standard schools.

He also disclosed the vast difference between the lives of people in power and those who governed in most, stressing that “African countries is like day and night, yet they are citizens of the same country.”

Congloe contended that the negative effect of corruption in West Africa on the people of West Africa is more significant than in other African regions.

“For example, air travel in West Africa is more complex than in most regions of Africa. At one time, West Africa had Air Afrique, Nigeria Air Ways, and Ghana Airways providing air travel services within West Africa, Across Africa, and the World,” he recounted.

He maintained that these West African airlines collapsed due to corruption, while West Africans rely largely on East African Airlines such as Air Ethiopia, Kenyan Airways as well as Air Morac from North Africa for travels.

He also wondered if there is any possibility for unity, reconciliation, and sustainable peace in any country in which a tiny minority of the people are visibly seen every day to be so rich by a majority of the people who are so poor that life has become so difficult to live.