Liberia: Weah Seeks Re-election

President George Weah has announced that he will seek re-election in the face of his administration’s ongoing struggles with high levels of unemployment and poverty rate, as well as with generally poor levels of economic and production activity. 

Weah, in his final State of the Nation Address yesterday,     swayed the narrative and public attention from what some considered as the cogent issues of corruption, increased poverty and the country’s significant drop in its Human Capital Index (HCI). 

The President rather dwelled on his stewardship of the economy, which of late has churned out steady growth, with inflation dropping at a moderate level.

The strength of the Liberian economy, with growth being underpinned by significant tailwinds from mining, and government’s planned scale-up of public investment, and the implementation of structural reforms including in key enabling sectors such as energy, were significantly highlighted in his three-and-a-half-hour speech.

Championing his economic gains, Weah, without providing any evidence, claims that he inherited a broken country from his predecessor Ellen Johson Sirleaf but has worked over the course of nearly six years to turn things around, which has made “naysayers and the prophets of doom” perplexed.

“When I took the oath of office in January of 2018, the Liberian economy was in a state of major distress. The macroeconomic foundations were weak. The country's net international reserve, which had been used by the previous Government to stabilize the exchange rate, was very low,” Weah claimed. “The exchange rate had plunged into free fall, and the then Government did not seem to have the tools to deal effectively with stabilizing the currency at that time. 

“As a consequence, inflation increased at an alarming rate, while domestic revenue and development assistance were in decline. In spite of the negative forecast when we first took on the mantle of leadership of this Nation in 2018, we have accomplished quite a lot, against all the odds. 

“The naysayers and the prophets of doom are perplexed by the progress that we have made.Those who have eyes to see will bear witness to how hard we have toiled in fulfillment of the constitutional mandate that was given to us by an overwhelming majority of the Liberian people.

The Liberian economy under Weah of late has experienced a strong growth rate of since 2021, after contracting more than 10% for two consecutive years.  Economic recovery in  2021 was 5.0% but softened to 3.7 percent in 2022, and is projected to reach 5.2 percent in 2023. 

This growth, which came as a result of the country’s participation in an IMF program, saw the government pushing to adopt policies that lead to macroeconomic stability, ensuring a comfortable international reserve position, and maintaining debt sustainability. 

And inflation is expected to remain low and stable, at 7.2% in 2023, giving hope that Weah might likely end his first term seeing reduction in the country’s poverty rate, considering that low inflation would help Liberian households retain purchasing power.

But these gains have overshadowed the rise in poverty sharply, which had been so since 2021. The country’s current poverty rate stands at  51%, wiping out nearly half of the postconflict gains made by Sileaf, whose tenure  saw the rate of poverty decline from 64 percent to 42 percent between 2007 and 2014.

These statistics are according to the World Bank World Bank 2022 Liberia Economic Update report.

Extreme poverty, according to the World Bank, is high as well and 2.3 million Liberians are unable to meet their basic food and non-food needs — with poverty being higher in rural areas — home to 71.7 percent of the poor, compared to 68 percent of the total population. 

Then there the issues of the country’s low Human Capital Index (HCI) score with performance as low 0.32, only better than only three countries in the world — namely, the Central African Republic (0.29), Chad (0.30), and South Sudan (0.31) — out of 174 countries. 

The country’s HCI has dropped significantly since Weah took power in 2018, and was driven mainly by poor education (contributing 50 percent), poor health (12 percent), and survival (7 percent), according to the World Bank 2022 Liberia Economic Update report.

The country’s loss of human capital due to poor education has been growing and, since 2020, it has increased 9 percentage points. Also, school enrollment rates have broadly declined during the period under review, yielding a lower number of years of schooling that a child born today can expect to have received by the time she reaches age 18.

Weah took office in 2018 in the West African country’s first peaceful change of power in seven decades and is constitutionally eligible to run again in the October 10 polls.

The 56-year-old leader promised to end endemic corruption his predecessor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Sirleaf, was widely accused of failing to address. But corruption remains endemic in the country, with the watchdog Transparency International ranking Liberia 136th of 180 countries in its 2021 corruption perceptions index.

The United States last year imposed sanctions on three Liberian government officials, including Weah’s chief of staff, for what it said was their ongoing involvement in public corruption. While disillusionment has been compounded by economic decline in a country where most of the population lives in deep poverty.

More importantly, Weah  would be seeking re-election at a time when is yet to implement nearly two-thirds of the promises made to the Liberian people — while seeking the presidency and after he came to power.

This is according to an assessment by Naymote, which shows  that Weah's first five years record  is overwhelmed by many unfulfilled political promises, notably in the battle against  poverty.

Weah, in his development manifesto after winning the 2017 election, had promised to provide greater income security to one million Liberians and reduce absolute poverty by 23 percent across 5 out of 6 regions, but much has not been done to reel the country from high unemployment and extreme poverty.

“Out of a total of 292 promises tracked during the assessment, only 24 promises (8%) have been fully implemented by the government over the last five years,”  Naymote, one of the country’s most respected to civil society organizations, said in a report, titled the President's Meter project. “The findings of this assessment show that President Weah and his government have yet to implement nearly two-thirds of the promises they have made to the people of Liberia.”

 “Numerous promises have been made, over the years, on poverty reduction, infrastructural development, social service delivery, rule of law, government accountability, and decentralization, among others,” the report added. “[But] 177 promises, which nearly two-thirds of all promises were identified as ‘not started because the government had not commenced work on their implementation.”

However,  Weah appears to disregard the Naymote report, saying his administration's success in tackling development while improving the country's macroeconomic regime for growth  is evident for all to see, saying  critics and opposition have tried for years to repress such narratives.

A record breaking claim of road construction, a total of 198 km of community roads in 7 counties, with over 75 km ongoing were some of the development issues Weah spoke off as he informed Liberian that of the “considerable gains” his administration had made in the road and transport during his tenure.

The president also spoke of stabilizing the country’s exchange rate “for one of the longest periods, while growing the country’s net international reserves to their highest level in decades and increasing domestic revenue to the highest level in Liberian history, as well as taking the national budget to its highest level as well. 

The current value of the  international reserves however was not disclosed and the Central Bank of Liberia is yet to release its 2022 annual report as well.

Weah also boosted the rate of electricity in the country, saying eight of the 15 counties in Liberia now have access to current, with high-voltage transmission lines covering 254 kilometers, while medium voltage transmission lines cover 641 kilometers with 180,000 households with access to grid electricity.

“We have done our part in delivering on most of the promises we made to you, while preserving the nation's peace and nurturing its democratic values. We are on an irreversible trajectory of sustainable growth that will necessarily and inevitably lead us to progress as a Nation and prosperity as a People,” he said.

“The truths of the difficult decisions and courageous corrections we have made during our tenure, concerning the pro-poor investments in education, health, roads and electricity, are out there for all Liberians to see and experience. It is on these truths that we stand, as we continue to face existing challenges to deliver a more prosperous future for all Liberians. But as it is often said that: ‘truth crushed to the ground, shall rise again.’” 

Weah noted that his new campaign message  is  Change That You Can Count On, which means that  he had fulfilled his promises made to  the Liberian people.