By: Samuel P. Jackson Development Consultant
The first indications that a government is serious to change conditions in a country will be the pain it is willing to endure and the cost it will bear. No pain no gain.
The Boakai Administration is not demanding sacrifices from its top officials but imposing pain and suffering on poor people. EPS officers. Executive Mansion lowly workers. Volunteer workers in slums and rural areas. Teachers. Nurses. Pehn pehn and keke drivers. Value boys and girls in Central Monrovia.
The Administration is laying off poor people. Removing street sellers. Obstructing the transportation of poor people from city streets. But not one sacrifice has been made by fat cat bureaucrats.
President Boakai appointed more senior advisors and board members of public corporations and state agencies than any president in recent memory. High priced advisors in a cluttered bureaucracy top heavy in personnel costs and benefits. Presidential appointments are being made in mid level management in public corporations and agencies of government. Most as a result of patronage to campaign sponsors and political operatives. No global talent.
The IMF Spring Meeting is being attended by many senior officials at a level not seen recently. Commerce Minister. Public Works. Etc. The Spring Meeting is not a place to make deals but for the Breton Woods guys and girls to grandstand and for foreign officials to meet and greet their colleagues at fancy dinners and cocktail parties. Drunk bureaucrats can’t make monumental decisions that will have global impact. Been there. Done that.
If the administration is to get validation of its rescue credentials from the poor Liberian public it must show its top officials are not riding “charo” on the Liberian people. It must reduce salaries and benefits at the top. Gasoline. Scratch cards. Foreign travel. Executive perks. Standardize vehicle purchases. Implement ride shares. Park non emergency government vehicles after working hours. Demonstrate that the rescuers themselves did not come to be rescued from poverty and hardship.
For now the public hasn’t seen any pain or cost been endured by drivers on the train. Weariness is about to set in. That will be followed by the familiar public yawn and official inertia of the past 177 years. Business as usual. And so it goes.
