amendment of the Constitution. But, Madam President, amendment of the Constitution by itself alone cannot institutionalize decentralization of political governance; and I submit that decentralization of political governance can only be actualized through a combination of amendment of the Constitution, revision of our laws and changes in the practices and attitudes of our leaders and people. Here again, as everything political must be driven by the Office of the President in this country in order for it to succeed, the onus is on you to begin to develop the mechanisms and processes, within the limits of the laws and the Constitution, to promote the successful decentralization of the political governance of our country. You must be the pacesetter and the trendsetter in this regard; Liberians expect nothing less; and as malleable as they are, they will follow your good policies, actions and practices. For example, it is provided by the Constitution that nearly every member of local government administration, except the chiefs, should be appointed by the President of Liberia. But I suggest, Madam President, that you now consider some level of decentralization of the governance of Liberia under a formula which provides that those who are appointed by you are first vetted and agreed upon by a local council of each county and that you will appoint whomever is nominated, subject to exercising the authority to dismiss him or her or otherwise sanction him or her if the local council recommends and proves to your satisfaction the need for dismissal or other form of sanction? While this formula, which could be initiated by an executive order and later transformed to a legislative enactment, would appear to be a sharing of your constitutional prerogatives with the local people of each political constituency of Liberia, it is my considered opinion that it would not violate the Constitution; you know I am a lawyer and you know that I am not a “falkajay” lawyer. More importantly, I dare submit that such new process will begin the experience which will be necessary to make political decentralization a success in this country. I dare also suggest that decentralization of political governance does not consist merely of granting local people the authority to choose or participate in the process for choosing their local leaders. Were that to be the case, decentralization of political governance would be equated to the grant of authority without the power to exercise it or the responsibility that is attended to it. In addition to a change of the selection process for local government leaders, certain defined responsibilities should devolve on local government officials as their exclusive domains, with only supervisory responsibility reserved to the President of Liberia. I dare also suggest that independent sources of revenue (e.g. property taxes) to finance certain local government operations should be reserved to local governments; and I would suggest that we go even another step further to adopt the policy of “revenue sharing” insofar as the revenue is generated from natural resources exploited from a political sub-division. And when I suggest revenue-sharing, I hasten to add that I don’t subscribe to certain provisions of the Public Finance Management Act, which require that all revenues for the Liberian Government should be deposited into a consolidated fund at the Central Bank of Liberia in the name of the Ministry of Finance. I suggest that revenue sharing should actually be what the expression literally means – that a certain percentage of the revenue generated from the exploitation of natural resources will be for the county where the deposits are located and that the payer of the revenue will pay that percentage directly to the local government administration, obtain a receipt and report the payment to the Ministry of Finance for the purpose of appropriate record-keeping and accountability. I make these recommendations even while I recognize and give credit to the policies and programs of county development funds and social development funds, which no government before you even thought about. I make these recommendations fully aware of the problems associated with the management of the county development funds and social development funds. I still make these recommendations because I believe that these recommendations facilitate more direct participation of the people in deciding their destinies and in determining what is good for them; and such more direct participation of the people in determining what is good for them enhances peace and reconciliation as a foundation for transformation of our country. Revenue sharing will be an impetus for sustained economic development all over Liberia; it will make local people responsible for the development of their own areas; it will encourage and facilitate competition between political sub-divisions; it will promote the return of qualified people to their localities to live and find employment. I submit that were revenue sharing employed during the years that iron ore was exploited from Bomi, Nimba, Bong and Cape Mount counties, those political sub-divisions would have been markedly different from what they are today. Similarly, if revenue sharing were in place when trees were felled from the forests of Sinoe, Grand Gedeh and Bassa, those political sub-divisions would have also been markedly different from what they are today. And I can only imagine now the significant difference that will be made in the lives of our people were we to adopt real decentralization of political governance through, among other things, the shareing of revenue generated from the exploitation of natural resources instead of retention of the antequated system that requires that all revenues must come to Monrovia to the Ministry of Finance, which will then decide what goes where and when. Madam President, I am aware of the “naysayers” who suggest that our political sub-divisions don’t have the human capacity for an effective process of political governance decentralization. But if we will wait for all the members of our political sub-divisions to earn graduate degrees and obtain years of experience in public administration, business administration or their related disciplines before we initiate the decentralization of the political governance of our country, it is my humble opinion that we will never ever start and we would definitely lose out on the opportunities for the transformation of our country. Now is the time and this is the opportunity for us to be bold and courageous to do what is right with the little that we have to develop the mechanism and set the process in motion for a dramatic change in the ways we do things – the way we govern the Republic of Liberia -so that all our people can feel a part of the governance process and take responsibility for their respective communities and their future. Madam President and other Members of the leadership of our country, even with all that has been done so far by this administration, there continues to be serious ethnic, religious and economic schisms in Liberia; we must bridge these gaps in order to enhance genuine national unity, integration and reconciliation. What the Tubman and Tolbert Governments did are commendable and we are grateful for what has been achieved and accomplished in the eight years since Madam President’s first election to the high office as President of this nation, but we must go beyond merely having all our people represented in the National Legislature, the building of monuments and the establishment of a national holiday to commemorate the laudable policy of national unification and integration. After a civil war, we must do something new and dramatic about bridging the gaps and making everybody feel that there are opportunities in Liberia for self-actualization and self-improvement. You have made tremendous progress in this regard, but I suggest that more needs to be done. For example, we are all aware that an academic degree arouses expectations in the graduate – expectations in this Liberia that a job will be available even though some of them are not as qualified as desirable. But if this expectation is not met or satisfied, frustration and disgruntlement set in; and it is almost always the national government that is blamed. Frustrated and disgruntled university graduates are not good for a country coming out of a civil war. Some new policies and programs ought to be put in place to address the situation of the thousands of graduates who are unemployed and perhaps languishing as part of the disadvantaged of our country. For starters, I suggest that we consider a program where all university graduates, regardless of tribe, social status or otherwise, be deployed to counties other than their counties of origin, to live and work for a period of three years, with the option reserved to them for extension for another period of two years? Such program will immediately relieved the pressure on the Liberian Government to find or create jobs in Monrovia for these thousands of graduates from universities each year; such program will help to provide staff for local government administrations and services (health, education, etc.) with young university graduates. And these young Liberians will educate and assimilate themselves into the cultures of other local communities in which they are submerged but about which they knew so very little or nothing before then; some might even get married partners or make life-long friends from there; others might decide to live in their new “homes” forever; and more importantly the social, ethnic and religious schisms will be bridged substantially. So I suggest that we try something like this to achieve peace and reconciliation throughout our country, knowing fully well that the fruits of such program will not be fully realized until 20 to 25 years of its implementation; but now, not later, is the time to begin it. After a devastating civil war, we, as a country and people, must also adopt special training programs to provide skills to the thousands and thousands of our young people, who either never had the opportunity to continue their education in normal schools or who are too old to continue with normal schooling? We must begin to wonder whether all the community colleges we have established and continue to establish are serving Liberia well when they concentrate on providing courses for degrees in business administration, pubic administration, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences, instead of training electricians, plumbers, mason, etc. – peoples who have marketable skills and will be able to meet the demands of a country on the verge of a growing and expanding economy. Some of untrained and unqualified young people were combatants in our civil war; others were merely victims of the civil war; and they are in their thousands. Accelerated skill-training programs could make the difference in their lives. They are the “Shoeshine Boy” whom the singer, Eddie Kendricks asked many years ago, “Where will you be ten years from now”? Where will they and their children be ten years from now? By providing marketable skills for this category of our people, we directly address the issue of reconciliation because we give them hope for a better future in Liberia; we make them stakeholders in our common patrimony. We might not capture all of them; but those who we capture will become a part of the force against recurrence of civil strife in our country. If we ignore them and as their numbers grow bigger and bigger, they will overwhelm us, if not us, then our children or grandchildren; and we all risk the terrible possibility that their frustrations will be manifested in ways that are undesirable for our country and its future. These disadvantaged youths of Liberia are just as important as any of us who sit here today is; and none of us is more Liberian than any of them. I am convinced that by addressing the plight and situation of these disadvantaged citizens of our country, we assure ourselves that the peace and reconciliation are being quietly realized in our country. Even for those of us who are not a “Shoeshine Boy”, we too need to be reconciled with ourselves and among ourselves; we too need to have a stake in the future of Liberia and to realize that a better Liberia provides opportunities for all of us. A strong private sector, with maximum participation of Liberians (including special incentives or affirmative action programs for Liberian entrepreneurs, especially as it relates to government’s purchases of goods and services), as the engine for the growth of the economy, for creating value, capital and wealth, as well as for energizing national development, must be pursued by the Liberian Government. The loans by the Central Bank of Liberia to the Liberian Business Association and the Marketing Association of Liberia, even though in my view outside of the purview of that agency, is a good beginning; but an affirmative action program which reserves certain business transactions with the Liberian Government exclusively to Liberian entrepreneurs and the out-sourcing of certain governmental activities (for example janitorial services and messenger services, etc.) on contracts exclusively to Liberian entrepreneurs will further enhance genuine reconciliation of the Liberian people. And when I talk about an affirmative action program, I am not talking merely about reserving to Liberians block-making business or fuel servicing station business, I am talking about substantial business activities which affect our economy and generate substantial revenues. By empowering Liberians through providing them opportunities from Liberian Government business transactions so that they can be more pro-actively involved in private business initiatives, we create a core population that will never want to experience a civil war again. The dream for peace and reconciliation will be a reality if by our actions and policies we create a real middle class of Liberians; and we can start this process by not only enabling and capacitating Liberians to become entrepreneurs but by also providing them the business opportunities which flow from their government. Madam President, Mr. Vice President and Members of the leadership of our country, we should encourage private entrepreneurship as a career, not merely as a convenience. Liberians who first go to public service, “acquire” wealth from employment in the public sector and then veer into private entrepreneurship, are nearly always suspect of corruption, even though not all of them may have been corrupt; but other Liberians almost always ask where the money was obtained from to enter private entrepreneurship. I don’t begrudge them; but I propose that public support for private entrepreneurship should distinguish between that set of Liberians who first seek employment in the public sector and the other set of Liberians who make private entrepreneurship a career. It is the latter who sets examples worthy of emulation by the generations which will follow us. We need to encourage this process and incentivize Liberians to become private entrepreneurs irrespective of the profession each chooses to get his or her training in. Complementary to private entrepreneurship should be an “Own-A-Part-Of-Liberia” policy; a policy which encourages, facilitates and capacitates each person to acquire his own land and house, to establish his own enterprise (even if it is just a small farm in his own name), to, in general, be a stakeholder in Liberia and its future. Especially to you, Honorable Members of the Legislature, how do you account for representing a people from your district when you don’t own even a hut in that district? When a person is a stakeholder in Liberia’s future, he or she will never subscribe to or condone any attempt by disgruntled people to destroy it; but when he or she has given up hope and sees no betterment for the future, he or she can be easily manipulated into destroying Liberia. We can avoid a recurrence of our civil war experience by creating as many serious stakeholders in Liberia’s future as we possibly can; and there will be no greater measure for peace and reconciliation than that since they will eventually be the “middle class” of our society. As the overwhelming majority of our people are engaged in subsistence agriculture and are generally the most victimized by tropical diseases, Liberia should adopt policies and invest substantially in the areas of agriculture and health, which directly impact the lives of these people. Unification, integration and reconciliation are not issues which are on the minds of hungry and diseased people; but it is these same hungry and diseased people who are easily manipulated into believing that violence change of government or the system will bring relief to them. If we can seriously address the issues of agriculture and health and thereby give most of our people some hope in the future of our country, we can all get the comfort that our differences are behind us and that the prosperities of our country are for all of us to enjoy and benefit from. It is this type of comfort that facilitates reconciliation. And Madam President, I am confident and I trust that you can make it happen for Liberia; you must make it happen for Liberia. Another group of people whom I believe are essential for true reconciliation is the nonresident Liberians, especially those who have been deprived of their Liberian citizenship only because they assumed the citizenship of another country. Make no mistake that these people influence politics, including elections in Liberia; the financial remittances they make to their relatives and friends in Liberia certainly influence how these relatives and friends think and act. If we insist that they are foreigners, then we must accept that their remittances, followed by their telephone calls to relatives and friends (especially during election time), are illegal. But you know that all major candidates in every Liberian election seek the support of these nonresident Liberians and they give their support to elections in Liberia. What then is the rationale for the retention of a law which makes them foreigners? These nonresident Liberians can be a fulcrum for peace and reconciliation and empirical evidence suggests that tremendous economic benefits are associated with those nine ECOWAS countries (including Sierra Leone, our neighbor) who have adopted dual citizenship for themselves. Why are we different from these nine ECOWAS countries; why don’t we see what they see? I suggest that we begin with a “Once-a-Liberian-Always-a-Liberian” policy, through which every Liberian citizen, wherever he may be or whatever his circumstances might be, can feel a part of and be a stakeholder of Liberia - a nation where a natural born citizen’s right and benefits of citizenship cannot be alienated or obliterated merely by his assumption of residency or citizenship of another country. And you, Madam President, as usual, could be the driver of this policy to ensure that it succeeds; and I urge you to drive the dual citizenship as quickly as you can. If dual citizenship is not accomplished during your term of office, Madam President, it is likely that your successor will get it done; and then it will be your successor, not you, who will be determined by these nonresident Liberians as the real reconciler. Madam President, Mr. Vice President and Members of the leadership of Liberia, genuine reconciliation is not possible unless we squarely face the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report, legally discard those recommendations which are unconstitutional and in conflict with our laws, and implement those recommendations which will foster the unity, integration and reconciliation of our people. We should not ignore the TRC Report and pretend that it does not exist; this will not augur well for us as a people and for our country. There can be no genuine reconciliation without disposition of the TRC Report; and I am one of those who believe that after setting aside the unconstitutional and illegal recommendations, some portions of the TRC Report are very useful for the transformation of our country. And it should be recalled that some of us have already offered our services to challenge in the courts of Liberia, if necessary, the unconstitutional and illegal recommendations of the TRC Report. We should seriously pursue implementation of the legally and constitutionally implementable recommendations of the TRC and we should make sure that the Liberian people know that we are doing just that. I submit that we can never claim to have accomplished genuine peace and reconciliation in Liberia without appropriate disposition of the TRC Report; and every day that we delay in the disposition of the TRC Report, we give the false impression that we are afraid of its content; and you know that we are not. Therefore I recommend that serious and consistent attention be paid to the systematic disposition of the TRC Report; it is a facilitator for genuine peace and reconciliation which could be used for the transformation of our country. Specifically to you, Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen of the Legislature, even though I have conceded that in our part of the world national political policies and programs are driven by the highest office of the country in order to be successful, you know that this was never the intention of the founders of this nation; they intended and enshrined it in the 1847 Constitution and it was reiterated in the 1986 Constitution, that the Legislature would be just as active and responsible for the leadership of Liberia and for championing the cause and interest of the people as the Presidency should be. The principle of coordination of the three branches of the Liberian Government mandates that the Legislature works and cooperates with the President and the President works and cooperates with the Legislature to ensure that Liberians get the most beneficial and effective governance of this country; it means you too should shoulder the responsibility of being original in your thoughts and tenacious in your actions; it means that the unnecessary bickering and antagonism between the President and the Legislature that often erupts into negative reporting in the media must be minimized; it means that our system of governance works best when these two political branches are cooperating with each other, not when they are fighting each other. You too can therefore promote genuine peace and reconciliation as a foundation for transformation of Liberia through the adoption of new policies and programs and better and more effective cooperation with the President to achieve good governance for the Liberian people. Such change in the course of your conduct would exude the confidence we need to attract foreign investments in Liberia, which, you know and I know, is necessary for the development of our country. So, let this 166th Anniversary of the Independence of the Republic of Liberia be the occasion at which you resolve to generate new ideas and programs for peace and reconciliation, to promote cooperation between you and the President and minimize antagonism between and among yourselves. With this last recommendation, I promise to wind-down this National Oration; but as I wind-down this National Oration, let me tell you a personal experience I had and that I will never forget as long as I live because it has affected my life since then. It was in the mid-1990s (hostilities had been suspended in our civil war) that I took my usual walk one work-day morning from my apartment at Snapper Hill, Ashmun Street to my offices at the corner of Ashmun Street and Mechlin Street. A child of about 10 or 11 years old hailed me: “Counsellor Sherman, Counsellor Sherman”. I stopped, turned and looked at him sitting on the top of a rock; he greeted me and I greeted him in return. Then he made this profound remark: “Counsellor Sherman, I admire you soooh!” I said thanks with a wide grin and continued my walk down to my offices. As I sat at my desk that morning, I momentarily became very sad as it dawned on me that that child might never become me. I wondered what kind of country is this that we have where a child can admire somebody he will never become. For on that school day that child was sitting on that rock and for each school day that he sat on that rock he would never become a lawyer like me. Our country needs to give hope to people like that child – hope that he can become whatever he wants to be. And when we can give all our people that hope we can then say to ourselves and the rest of the world that never again, thank God Almighty, never again will our country experience the devastations of civil hostilities. Finally, I reiterate that much has been achieved and accomplished in the areas of peace and reconciliation, but there is so much more to be done for genuine peace and reconciliation to be realized in Liberia and used for the transformation of our country. It is highly commendable that Madam President chose to dub the celebration of the 166th Anniversary of Independence Day as a day to reflect on the urgent need for genuine peace and reconciliation and how we can use our achievements and accomplishments in this regard for the transformation of our country. It is a thought worth exploring and I can only hope that I have done justice to the subject matter. I have spoken to you today in the context of some of the dreams I have for Liberia and asked why not? I thank you, Madam President, for the opportunity to share my thoughts about important topical and relevant issues relating to the future of our common patrimony with you, the Vice President, other Members of the leadership of our country and our citizens at large. May God Almighty always inspire and guide our thoughts about Liberia and bless the works of our hands. And may He bless this Republic of Liberia.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 13:18:08 +0000