IT IS A MERE fact that safety and security lie at the heart of the prosperity of every nation and Liberia is of no exception.
CITIZENS WANT TO feel safe or protected from risk or injury and free from danger and threat, but today, security is challenged in all aspects of our daily lives.
TRUST IN SECURITY institutions that should keep us safe has gone low. For Liberia in particular, public trust in national security institutions, mainly the police and the National Security Agency, have gone all time low.
GONE ALL TIME low because national security personnel are yet to understand that they should be neutral and stay out of politics.
TODAY, SOME CITIZENS refer to the Liberia National Police as a partisan police force. Interestingly, rather than proving their critics wrong, officers of the police and other security agencies have in many instances, proven their critics right.
A CLASSIC EXAMPLE are the biases the Police exhibited on July 26, 2022, Independence Day.
On that historic day, members of the Liberia National Police, apparently being compromised, opened the corridor for a group known as CDC-COP to have violently dispersed peaceful student protesters under the banner of the Student Unification Party of the University of Liberia, SUP, near the US Embassy in Monrovia.
SOME OF THE students were severely injured in the hands of stone-throwing CDC-COP members.
AGAIN ON SATURDAY, February 4, 2023, the day the ruling CDC put out its partisans to petition President George Weah to seek a second term of office, some personnel of the National Security, without any remorse of conscience, were seen in CDC t-shirts with the inscription, ‘Weah 2023’.
WE WERE DUMBFOUNDED by the sight of national security personnel wearing the t-shirts and other paraphernalia of a political party, especially the ruling party.
ISN’T THIS SCARING for opposition political parties and their partisans?
OBVIOUSLY IT DOES. It suggests that a national security crisis is imminent, especially at a time a crucial presidential and legislative elections in which incumbent President George Weah, desperately wants to win a second term.
JUDGING FROM SATURDAY’S display by some national security personnel of CDC-partisanship, opposition politicians and their supporters are likely to be at risk during the pending 2023 elections.
FOR THE SAKE of peace and security in a Country that experienced long years of brutal armed conflicts, we urge members of national security agencies, especially the police, to remain neutral by staying out of politics.
LET OUR SECURITY agencies remain state security agencies, not partisan security agencies. It is the State that you serve, not political parties or politicians.
