As President George Manneh Weah Is Set to Deliver the Last State of Nation Address in His First Term of Office on Next Monday, what is Expected? Success In Giving Voice to Diaspora Liberians May Feature High

IPNEWS – President George Manneh Weah is expected, constitutionally, to address Liberians, next Monday, January 30, 2023, which will be the fourth working Monday. The President is by the dictates of the 1986 Constitution required to present his Legislative Agendas for the ensuing session of the Legislature.

January 30th, 2023 isn’t the fourth Monday in January 2023. But the first Monday was on New Year’s Day and so it’s not counted as a working day. So, the fourth-working day was shifted to the last Monday of January.

Mr. Weah is going to, in fulfillment of Article 58 of the Liberian Constitution, stand before the millions of Liberians through their 103 representatives in the Capitol Building, to present the Legislative Program of his Administration. Article 58 also mandates the President to, on the fourth working Monday of January each year, report to the people of Liberia on the State of the Republic, covering the economic condition of the nation, including expenditure and income.

This is not going to be the President’s first time standing and speaking to his fellow Liberians on the state of affairs of their country. He has been doing so for the last five years, since 2017. This fourth-working Monday address, which will be his last for the first six-year term of Office of the Presidency, would certainly be loaded with lots of accomplishments under his watch as head manager of the Liberian Estate. He will be listing these accomplishments in anticipation that they will woo more Liberians to his side ahead of the Presidential and Legislative Elections this year.

In October 2017, all Liberians decided to, among those who had come asking for them to select them to be head of their collective “estate”, choose Mr. Weah for the next six years after Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s last constitutional terms had ended, to manage it, too. President Weah stepped up to the plate, took charge and has since left his indelible marks in all spheres of the Liberian society. He has few more months to still make more unforgettable prints on all Liberians, born and yet to be born.

But as the President and his team of writers, including researchers, ponder on what to report to Liberians for the immediate past year and previous years of this administration, Liberians, themselves, maybe thinking what their leader will tell them, especially so, when this year is another year of decision making by all Liberians on whom to make their new manager for the next six-year term of the Presidency.

DUAL CITIZENSHIP SUCCESS

IPNEWS takes a look back at one key thing that has made the President to be a man of his word or as Liberians put it: ‘Talk and Do.’

In the President’s first-ever State of Nation Address (SONA) on January 29, 2018, he promised Liberians that he was going to take the bull by the horn to, working with the Legislature, give back the voices of diaspora Liberians, who had been advocating for their Liberian citizenship to be restored and maintained many years before the President began his tenure in 2017.

“The third matter of concern to me is the restriction placed in our Constitution on Liberians holding dual citizenship. I believe that most Liberians who are also citizens of another country probably acquired the additional nationality as a means to escape from the terrible atrocities, which characterized our civil conflict, and for economic survival in their new countries of residence. If, as a condition precedent for other countries to grant citizenship to these persons, they had to disavow their loyalty to Liberia and pledge allegiance to the laws of another country, then it could have been out of necessity, rather than a matter of the heart. And if conditions now exist in Liberia that make them want to return home and contribute their quota to the development of our common patrimony, then I do not think that it is fair to treat them as noncitizens in the land of their birth. Many Liberians in Diaspora have heard my clarion call to return home and bring their energies, skills, talents, and expertise to join us in the building of a New Liberia. We need them, and so long as they were born in this country, they were Liberians first, and I believe that they should be welcomed back home with open arms. Whether or not they are required to renounce their adopted nationalities, it should be a matter of their consciences and the 11 laws which govern their naturalization in their respective domiciles. They should be free to make those choices and decisions,” the President back in 2018.

In 2020, the President made dual citizenship one of three proposals that Liberians had to vote for in a referendum. The three proposals failed miserably. Liberians rejected them at the polls. But like the stainless stuff George Weah is made of, he didn’t get discourage and dash the hopes of over half a million Liberians, who are in the diaspora. He still had it as a front burner.

True to his words and hard work, he pushed through all the obstacles and few years later, in 2022, Dual Citizenship became a reality for diaspora Liberians. It became the law of the land, with a famous inscription, which was coined by Mr. Emmanuel S. Wettee, Eminent Chairman, All-Liberian Conference on Dual Citizenship (ALCOD): “Once a Liberian, Always a Liberian.”