Towards the achievement of Social Justice in Liberia

The 2010 World Cup is over and the football gods were seen speaking through their messengers.
The Parrot was the least performer but Paul the octopus was a phenomenon character. He accurately predicted the outcome of key games, mainly  Germany versus Spain and Spain versus The Netherlands in the semi and grand finals respectively.. The eight-legged oracle revealed to football fans that Spain will beat The Netherlands.

Some  soccer fans, including former President Charles Taylor and his associates,  joined the Spanish in jubilation, hoping and praying that the oracle’s prediction comes true.

The question, why the former president and allies, is unexpected. There he sits in The Hague facing war crimes charges and watched his favorite team - Brazil crumble to the feet of the Dutch.

A double pain it would have been for him, watching the Dutch being crowned as world champions and witnessing a live celebration around his detention center.

But all went well for that great footballing nation - Spain and their supporters. The football oracle was right! Spain is now world Champions.

But the oracles’ authority are unrestricted. They surface everywhere including but not limited to politics to demonstrate their spiritual or supernatural power.

Here, with general and presidential elections just  few miles away, the political oracles have shown their heads up and moving with two legs.

Time, it is a known fact, waite for no one. The oracles are aware of this and have hired several messengers to read the writings in the sky since the ordinary man has not the eyes to see.

Few days ago, they assembled in their numbers and marched to the Capitol the official seat of  legislators, who theoretically are the  people’s servants. These were elders  or chiefs as they are tagged,  from the country’s elite  National Traditional Council.

Their headquarters is  one of the plush buildings in Monrovia, located on Tubman Boulevard, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.  They ride land cruiser and Pathfinder jeeps and drive in impoverished communities. But these are the nation’s elders who listen to the gods about its fortune and misfortune, thus they must live in luxury and forecast the future to the leaders.

At the Capitol, the elders moved in with a straight message from the traditional high priest. There position with respect to the population threshold bill and the scheduled 2011 elections was sharp and uncompromising.

“Many of you will not be reelected if you failed to listen to us” the message was unveiled with threat. But the leader of the Senate had an insight of what was about to be told. Thus his clash with the chiefs was quite understandable.

Protemp Cletus Wotorson declared the elders as uninvited gusts.
The Senator: “What you cannot do to President Sirleaf’s office or whoever, you cannot do that here. You can’t just come to my office without informing me?”

But with my spiritual eyes, I hear the Senator saying “ You want me jobless. Oh! you don’t want Blamo Nelson and Adophus the ‘Peanut Butter’ to come back. What you cannot say to President  Sirleaf in her face, don’t say it to me. You don’t know that the President is 72 and I’m 73? You have to be gender sensitive. Why you cannot tell her to step down first before coming to me. Ladies before gentle men, you don’t know this My old man?”

More importantly, the chiefs’ message for which legislators are demanded to accept or face massive rejection in 2011 is decorated with contradiction, lawlessness, blind loyalty and twisted logic.

Firstly, the Chiefs’ threat is what one will ultimately yield to if and only if their power is equivalent to that of God. If they were God Almighty, the legislators will agree to their proposal and remain in power while those aspiring to become members of the legislature in 2012 will remain in dreamland.

Here is the elders’ proposal relative to timely and peaceful elections in 2011 and the summary is this: The 2008 national house and human population census report should not be used for constituency demarcation and legislative representation but they want a threshold bill enacted. This is Elder Logic 101.

“The 52nd National Legislature should set aside the said result to be exclusively used for socio-economic and development planning and set a new threshold in accordance with our constitution and such must ensure that the present 64 seats  in the house of representatives are maintained due to global financial constraints.”

“We want to commend the wisdom of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf for being so farsighted to have vetoed the threshold bill twice.”

The crafters of the chiefs’ statement did not do them justice. Their statement contain logical flaws and this was a misrepresentation of the traditional community. Elders, we are told, are people with wisdom but the Zanzan Kawah’s group have had an unfortunate day.

Let the Chiefs know this: there will be no socio economic development once there is political instability. Perhaps, those who wrote their speech deliberately ignored this. The census results are not only intended for social and economic development nor are they purposely for politics but both. A trade-off is not required either.

The traditional council is praising the President when their position is contrary to those of hers. She wants a threshold based on the constitution while they are kicking sand in the face of the organic law.

Let not our chiefs be deluded. Those who reduced them to anti constitutional crusaders  have sinned against the oracles and the traditional community.