-After Six Years of Troubles
Just a year into his presidency, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, commonly known as Chatham House, described President George Weah as a conflicted leader.
In its January 18, 2019 assessment of Weah’s first year in office, a British think tank said there were high expectations that Weah would tackle corruption and boost the economy. Still, he struggled with entrenched interests and demands of patronage.
“Despite early signs that he would take on bureaucratic excess and corruption, rebuild infrastructure, and drive economic development, Weah’s first year in office has been haunted by the old guard of Liberian politics, hampered by limited resources and dogged by controversies over missing money. Continuity seems to be winning out over change,” Chatham House said.
However, that initial assessment would be true for the rest of the President’s six-year tenure with some additions of extrajudicial killings, bad governance, and lack of respect for the rule of law.
These, sealed by reports of pervasive corruption, many believe cost Weah his second term bid in a presidential race to a man he defeated in 2017.
While many believe there were so many things wrong in the last six years, almost everyone agrees that Weah’s tenure was marred by leadership deficits, impulsive decisions, massive corruption, and selective justice. The President even surreptitiously outsourced his presidential authority to two of his supervisees, mainly the Ministers of State for Presidential Affairs, Nathaniel McGill, and Finance and Development Planning, Samuel Tweah, Jr.
Although the Ministers themselves need routine hands-on supervision in the execution of their respective job duties, they are Mr. Weah’s go-to persons or foremost pillars in government.
He relies heavily on them for the execution of his daily presidential duties—detaching himself from the people who had elected him to steer the affairs of the state.
Weah's presidency in Liberia initially brought hope to many citizens, who saw his rise to power as a chance for a better life.
“It is my belief that the most effective way to directly impact the poor and to narrow the gap between rich and poor is to ensure that public resources do not end up in the pockets of government officials,” Weah, who had tasted poverty as a slum dweller before reaching global stardom, said in his inaugural address On January 22, 2018, to a mammoth cheering crowd at the Samuel K Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville
He could not live up to this commitment and as time went on, Weah's popularity waned, culminating in his loss to former Vice President Joseph Boakai in the recent presidential vote.
While there were various reasons for Weah's declining support, corruption emerged as a significant issue. Weah's failure to establish a war crimes court and address the drug epidemic also contributed to his loss of public trust.
Corruption, in particular, spurred significant protests in the country, with Weah being accused of squandering opportunities for socioeconomic transformation. Liberia has long struggled with corruption, but under Weah's leadership, corruption worsened, with the country's ranking on Transparency International's corruption perceptions index falling. The menace drove some of the biggest protests in Liberia’s history.
“[Weah] promised to ‘weed out the menace of corruption’; however, greed and graft have become the hallmarks of his presidency,” Robtel Neajai Pailey, a Liberian academic, activist, and author based in London, said in an ALJAZEERA interview last year. “President Weah squandered practically every opportunity to score the country’s most important goal of socioeconomic transformation.”
From the beginning, Weah and his officials neglected to publicly declare their assets, setting the tone for a government marked by corruption. One high-profile scandal involved the alleged disappearance of L$16 billion, which was later revealed as a case of illegal printing.
Two months before the missing banknotes scandal, the government had injected US$25 million into the economy to extract the excess Liberian dollars in circulation. The President said the injection would curb inflation and the depreciation of the Liberian currency.
However, another scandal arose when an examination by Liberia's General Auditing Commission exposed discrepancies in government disbursements.
Anderson Miamen, the Executive Director at the Centre for Accountability and Transparency in Liberia, told James Giahyue in an ALJAZEERA interview that he believes Liberians voted Weah out because of corruption.
“Everywhere we went, people asked questions about the situation of corruption in the country and what the government is doing about it. In the different reports that we’ve done over the years, citizens have expressed disappointment in the government’s lack of strong will to deal with corruption,” Miamen said.
“We believe that it played a part in the way people voted,” Miamen said. “He didn’t really live by his word.”
The deaths of several auditors within a short span of time in 2020 further fueled public mistrust towards the Weah government regarding corruption.
The first incident involved Albert Peters and Gifty Lama from the Liberia Revenue Authority, who were found dead in a car in Monrovia on October 2. Pathologists determined that they died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a defective exhaust system in the vehicle.
Shortly thereafter, George Fahnboto, another auditor from the same authority, died from head wounds in a car crash near Monrovia on October 4. Emmanuel Nyeswa, the head of Liberia's Internal Auditing Agency, was found dead with head wounds outside his home in the same neighborhood as Fahnboto on October 10.
The inconclusive autopsy results added to the outrage surrounding the auditors' deaths. The US-based Institute of Internal Auditors reached out to then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to seek assistance in investigating the deaths, but no substantial help was provided.
However, the US did impose sanctions on three senior members of Weah's government—Nathaniel McGill, Bill Twehway, and Serenius Cephas—for their involvement in public sector corruption in Liberia. Many believe that the lack of consequences for the elites helped to damage the reputation of Weah's leadership.