Pres. Weah needs to be careful
Retired football legend President George Manneh Weah continues to receive punches from Liberians for the slow pace at which his Coalition government is proceeding, amid high expectations.
The Weah-led administration pronounces a pro-poor agenda for the people, but opposition politician Abraham Darious Dillon challenges the government to present a plan that would spell out in clear terms what that much publicized slogan intends to achieve.
He believes the administration has no written plan on how it intends to address education, agriculture or infrastructure. “What is the plan? There is no plan”, he says.
Speaking with OK FM 99.5, a local radio station in Monrovia, Mr. Dillon, who comes from the opposition Liberty Party, admonishes President Weah to not focus on his critics, but the issues they raise.
He argues that pro-poor does not suggest that you celebrate poverty, but lifting people out of poverty. He believes this could just be another mere slogan by another administration, recalling that the late President William R. Tolbert heralded ‘From Mat to Mattress’ but left Liberians sleeping on bare floors, while slain President Samuel Doe introduced ‘Green Revolution’, but Liberians cannot still feed themselves, jailed former President Charles Ghankay Taylor came up with Vision 2024, but left the citizenry literally blind, and President Weah’s immediate predecessor, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf introduced poverty reduction strategy, but left the people even poorer.
He notes that these strategies were suggested to graduate people from poverty, but they failed miserably.
-Story by Jonathan Browne
