Brumskine a big liar

Vice President Joseph Nyumah Boakai has sharply reacted to recent criticism coming from Cllr. Charles Walker Brumskine of the opposition Liberty Party, describing the LP standard bearer as a “big liar.”

In a live broadcast last week, Cllr. Brumskine accused VP Boakia, who is current standard bearer of the governing Unity Party of spreading rumor that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was supporting his (Brumskine’s) bid for the presidency.

“I have heard this for a while from other presidential candidates and their surrogates and even surrogates of the Vice President, but hand decided not to respond, knowing that it is designed to distract from the important issue of who is most prepared to lead our country. But because such nonsense has been reiterated by a presidential candidate, who is the sitting Vice President of the country, I now feel constrained to respond”, Brumskine had alleged recently.

But Vice President Boakai says the Liberty Party leader’s assertion is totally misrepresentation of the facts.

Speaking to this paper on the campus of the Garretson W. Gibson High School in Monrovia on Sunday, March 19, he said Cllr. Brumskine, being someone, who wants state power should practice to tell the truth always.

“It is good for someone who wants state power to practice true telling and I advise that he desists from misrepresentation of the facts. It doesn’t show any value to the young people,” said VP Boakai, who is equally aspiring to become the next President of Liberia after Madam Sirleaf.

Boakai, who appears to be uncomfortable with question about reported US$9 million allocated in the national budget for the past years for his office, said that the national budget is a public document that anyone could read.

He challenged Liberians to read the budget and make their judgment about it, stressing that it is the moral responsibility of the Liberty Party strongman to tell the true.

VP Boakai recently accused President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf thru the media of withholding support and abandoning the governing Unity Party, including him as the new standard bearer, and candidate for President, an allegation that subsequently led President Sirleaf to have recently attended a rally at the UP headquarters in Congo Town where 15 brand new twin-cabin pickups were presented to the ruling party for use in all 15 counties in a show of reassurance.

In a statement last Thursday, March 16, Cllr. Brumskine noted that he was constrained to respond to the accusation against his party on grounds that it has been reiterated by Vice President Boakai.

He claimed that that for the 2017/2018 fiscal year, the government has proposed to give the office of VP Boakai US$2,394,287; while for the current fiscal year 2016-2017, the government gave VP Boakai office US$2, 193759, and fiscal year 2015-2016, the government gave the VP office US$2,313,094, respectively.

Brumskine continued that VP Boakai allegedly received US$1,828,091 in 2014-2015, while Ebola was raging and killing people in Lofa; and that the VP has over the last three years received in total US$8,729,231.

He further alleged that VP Boakai received nearly US$9 million from the 2014 fiscal budget, while the total spending on health institutions in his (Boakai’s) native Lofa County for the same three year period was only US$3,406,881.

Cllr. Brumskine said claims that the Liberty Party is being supported by President Sirleaf, are totally false, adding that there was no iota of truth to the insinuation of the Vice President.

He said President Sirleaf has not given the party any such support in cash or kind, though he bragged that it appears that the LP is better financed now than it was in 2011.

By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor-Editing by Jonathan Browne