CDC points to looming insecurity

The Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), Liberia’s main opposition party, has expressed serious concern about the wave of ‘insecurity’ looming in Liberia.

The party says it is worried by the alarming wave of insecurity, raised by the death of Mr. Harry Greaves, a politician, entrepreneur and former public servant, under mysterious circumstances, replicating the still unexplained death of whistleblower Michael Allison.

Mr. Greaves who was found dead Sunday, 31 January on shores behind the old budget bureau on Capitol Hill in Monrovia after he reportedly went missing from the RLJ Kendeja Hotel along the Robertsfield highway in Margibi County where he had logged in about two days earlier.

Addressing a news conference here, CDC national chairman, Nathaniel McGill, said the most recent case of the death of Mr. Greaves, former managing director of the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company is not a lone blade of grass on a desert island; rather, it’s reflective of a sequence of unexplained and macabre deaths in counties across the country, noting “It is a sign that no Liberian anywhere in his or her own country can say that, he or she is safe, unless he or she chooses – like the government, to vacate his or her sense of purpose and industry.”

Chairman McGill further noted that the late Greaves was no stranger to the inner circle of the Unity Party-led government as he knew them well and had stories that were worth knowing by the public and worth suppressing to those implicated in the web of facts he could reveal. “Greaves was a potential state witness for any future government, like that of the CDC – in trying to bring to justice corrupt officials of this regime”, he said and added that the regime is showing gross callousness to the loss of life presented by this situation whereby, instead of concentrating on the immense challenge of gathering already difficult to establish evidence, the authorities are more interested in stifling the views of concerned and vested citizens.

“The Ministry of Justice has given itself the impossible task of policing the speculations and complaints of a population paralyzed with fear. The residents of Liberia and Liberian Nationals around the world, have every right to raise questions on a lethargic justice system, and to have no trust in state security apparatus all; this is the same state apparatus that could not prevent Victoria Zayzay from meeting her untimely death in a police cell in St. Paul Bridge Community, Montserrado, and has not been able to bring satisfactory investigative results to bear on the glaring truth of foul-play from the Police end.”

According to the party, experience tells that an autopsy is not a solution by itself, as it simply presents a Pathologist’s opinion on physical facts that might have led to death, and tells no one of the individuals who did the killing or the motives for the death; it might rule out a few courses of actions but does not establish an answer to all things.

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