BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – The Gongloe Global Movement for the election of Counselor Tiawan Saye Gongloe hereby condemns and denounces the shameless, preposterous and highly irresponsible statement recently made out of arrogance by President George Manneh Weah’s Chief of Staff and Presidential Affairs Minister, Mr. Nathaniel McGill, justifying the pervasive thefts and orchestrated looting of the national coffers, and the squandering of public resources within the Weah administration.
Speaking recently at a political event in Bong County, Mr. McGill suggested that poor Liberians, who are victims of the ongoing public stealing, should somehow be tolerant of, or accept government officials’ rampant theft because George Weah and his officials are supposedly “investing” their stolen money and ill-gotten wealth in Liberia, adding, “At least I’m not stealing the money carrying all in Europe.”
He even claimed in that video remark that all those who worked in former President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s administration had also stolen money and carried their stolen money to foreign countries, but the official thieves in the Weah administration were allegedly investing theirs in Liberia. These are sad days in our beloved country.
As our leader, Counselor Tiawan Saye Gongloe has reiterated on numerous occasions, government positions are primarily an opportunity for occupants of those positions to scrupulously render public service for the well-being of the Liberian people, not for public stealing. If Mr. McGill is not aware, consistent with Liberia’s jurisprudence, stealing is a serious crime with prescribed punishments, including a jail sentence, among others.
Moreover, Counselor Gongloe has been consistently reminding his fellow compatriots that national leaders are national role models, who should be setting good examples for others, especially for the younger generation to follow. It is unfortunate that rather than helping to inculcate virtues in our young people, who are the future leaders of Liberia, Mr. McGill who currently occupies an influential position in the Weah administration, is blatantly engendering the vices of criminality within the younger generation, so as to deliberately compromise their future.
Contrary to the figment of Mr. McGill’s imagination, there is absolutely no law in Liberia that exempts anybody—whether a mega-thief or a petty criminal–from prosecution, because such a person had invested their stolen money in the country. To put it bluntly in Liberian parlance, “a rogue is a rogue”, whether you build mansions or skyscrapers with your stolen money or not, you are still a thief.
Moreover, contrary to McGill’s twisted rationalization, abject poverty and deprivation have become pathetically endemic in Liberia, because rather than formulating and implementing forward-looking policies that will stimulate socio-economic development, President Weah and his officials are bent on stealing and supposedly “investing” in their personal well-being to the detriment of the Liberian people.
If President Weah and his officials were actually investing their stolen money in Liberia as Mr. McGill shamelessly claims, severely sick patients would not be frequently denied admission and highly needed services at the few remaining functioning hospitals in Liberia, due to the insufficiency of medicines or drugs, hospital beds, or women would not be frequently dying in child-birth, due to the lack of facilities, or Liberia would not have been designated by the Global Hunger Index as one of the “10 Worst Hunger Countries” in the world.
In spite of McGill’s claim of investing their stolen money, even many government officials and private citizens in Liberia who can afford, have had to travel to Ghana, India, and other countries to seek medical services, due to the near lack of, or dilapidated healthcare facilities in Liberia. If President Weah and his officials don’t intend to carry out the public service work for which they were elected by the Liberian people in 2017, they should stop further contaminating the Liberian society with their reckless and irresponsible utterances which seek to normalize massive criminality.
