RESPONSE TO NEWDAWN EDITORIAL

Mr. Editor:

For the information and reading pleasure of our readers, we offer, hereunder, contrary views to your Editorial,Stay Order On 72nd is Timely,published onMay 2, 2017.

We believe that this Editorial is an excellent example of Praise-Singingof the High & Mighty that characterized Liberia’s disastrous, political culture for 170 years and continuing, to the detriment of the nation and people.

Now, if the Stay Oder was a decision taken to facilitate consultations with the Ministry of Defense, then it was the proper, necessary management decision, because the C-I-C, President of the nation, is doctrinaire, dogmatic and basically a political animal who is not informed nor knowledgeable, intimately, of military Rules & Regulations and the management/administration thereof; accordingly, the consultations could and should have been handled, quietly, through the offices of the C-I-C and the Ministry of Defense.

Not the National Security Council, because the issue is concerned not with national security, but with Ministry of Defense Personnel Housing, a management/administrative issue of military Rules & Regulations, applicable to active and/or retired, military personnel.

One may argue national security in the sense or context that, ultimately, the Ministry of Defense is basically, fundamentally a national security institution with responsibility to defend and protect the territorial jurisdiction and people of the nation. But the management/administration of the internal rules & regulations designed to facilitate or meet this responsibility rest, purely and definitively, with the Ministry of defense, especially, in the instant case in which it is said that occupants of Camp 72nd are retired AFL personnel.

Moreover, the involvement of the Honorable, Representative Thomas Fallah of the National Legislature and the Honorable National Legislature, itself – an individual and national political institution, all completely ignorant of the requisite military rules & regulations regarding personnel management, let alone retirement benefits, etc., including the political President, this whole ball of wax smacks political maneuverability.

Therefore, the Stay Order, pending consultations of the National Security Council,appears to be politically-motivated embargo on lawful and fair military decision.

Bai M. Gbala, Sr.