LIBERIA – The Student Unification Party of the University of Liberia (SUP) says it is Planning a massive protest against the Government of President George Weah on July 26, Liberia’s independence Day.
The SUP cited corruption, economic failure, and bad governance as the reasons for the protest against President Weah and his government.
July 26, 2022, Liberia will be celebrating its 175th Independence Anniversary.
According to SUP, the protest is necessitated by the excesses of bad governance practiced by the Weah government, including economic failure, massive corruption, and state collapse.
The UL firebrand student grouping then called on all well-meaning Liberians to boycott all programs earmarked for the celebration throughout the country and urged the citizens to join the mass action against the government on that day.
In a press statement signed and approved by the Secretary-General and Chairman of the campus-based student organization, Jusu Kamara and Mustapha N. Kanneh, the students narrated the conditions the nation has been experiencing since the ascendancy of the CDC-led government, describing it as “turbulent and tumultuous for the Liberian people”.
“It has been five years since the homeland was beseeched by not just one of the worst tragedies ever in the country’s history, but also the least yet fraudulent collection of people who are so bereft of statecraft. The last five years have been very turbulent and tumultuous for the Liberian people as discontent, hopelessness, and frustration overwhelm them due to the poor leadership that presides over the Country.”
SUP says Liberia is at a critical juncture where the path to a progressive state-building remains elusive to the people; with no hope, horror has become the official symbol of the country. Hard times and crises have befallen the people thus subjecting the masses of the Liberian people to horror and economic despondency.
This is a miasma never experienced before in the motherland, SUP said in the press release.
“The country is in a hemorrhaging tornado of crisis. There is a general degeneration and sporadic breakdown of the Liberian state. Governance is now taken for wild child’s-play as George Weah and his cohorts distribute the resources of the country amongst themselves. The countryside is bleeding and crying. The people are living akin to the wrong side of forty; they sleep in darkness and under odious circumstances, they struggle very hard to survive and to see the next day”, they pointed out in the press release.
Under these difficult circumstances, SUP notes that some young people have either dropped out of school or abandoned school to toil for economic survival.
Social vices, they continued, are on the increase in their dozens; a situation pushing many young people into shameful existence- crime is on the rise, prostitution is on the rise, and misdemeanor is on the rise- all these are throwing the republic back to the sewage tank”, the statement said.
SUP maintained that it is appalled with how President Weah has plunged the state into reverse, saying the economy is in atrophy and vulgar insolvency, and that in five years counting the CDC-Weah formation cannot boast of a single Foreign Direct Investment or any noteworthy investment in the country to contribute to youth employment.
“Frustratingly, businesses are experiencing mass closure due to bad economic policy, fiscal misrule, and corruption. Investors are running away from Liberia. Because of these, unemployment continues to skyrocket consequently leading to harsh living conditions for the Liberian people. Today in Liberia, more children are selling in the streets than they were before 2018. Many more kids are missing basic primary and secondary education.
“The cost of living continues to increase while the government is endlessly harmonizing civil servants’ salaries. Dependency is growing. Poverty is multiplying and hunger has reached an unprecedented height. George Weah has consigned a once thriving republic to the pit of acrimonious destitution- a trilogy of everything bad!”, SUP said.
Continuing further, SUP said, “As though George Weah and his cliquish minority of crooks have not gotten satisfied with their loot, they have abandoned the education and health sectors to paralyze in dirt busts.
“Today, public institutions of learning like the University of Liberia, Tubman High, G.W. Gibson, D. Twe Memorial, etc are in the doldrums of sludge and feculence. The few public schools in the countryside are not supported so they are there laying in rags. But again, we have a president that shed slanders on education- mocking it to nothing. Yes, we are not surprised that this regime has failed to improve education. George Weah himself is a proud academic degenerate!”
Speaking on the health sector, SUP asserted that the government has led it in shambles and turmoil, adding that in Liberia today, thousands of Liberians continue to die from curable and preventable illnesses like malaria and typhoid. It said that this is happening due to a lack of vital drugs in public hospitals, lack of qualified staff, and lack of modern equipment, lamenting that health workers have protested continuously due to poor working conditions and delayed salaries while hospitals around the country lie in ruins. “Our people are dying in numbers while the clueless and careless president dances “Buga.” Under George Weah, Liberia is facing a serious leadership vacuum.
“Right before our eyes, we are seeing our country dying in the hands of these social riff-rafts, decorated fortune hustlers, and arrogant tribal minions who have demonstrated shortsighted understandings of public service and nation-building. The leadership of the country is everything rotten and roguish. The government has failed on it campaign promises and betrayed its obligations to the Liberian people and the country is burning down as terror, mysterious deaths, agony, and despair have taken center stage in the destiny of the homeland.
SUP: “As the country clocks 175 years of independence, the failed regime is planning pageantry and festivities, but the question is, what does Weah have to show after almost 5 years of misrule? Massive failure and unprecedented corruption are all we can say that is there to celebrate. Under this kleptocracy, the country is propelled in a way that it works at the disadvantage of the people from whom raw labor and the Weah’s criminal syndicate pillage the national treasury.”
And very interestingly, SUP disclosed that the country is run in a way that only members of the regime benefit from the commonwealth while the people are made to believe that things are difficult.
“On the sweat and blood of the Liberian masses, Weah and his troop of criminals and thieves arrogantly wine and dine. What a dreadful yet disconcerting arrogance on display in Liberia”, the statement said.
The foremost student movement on the UL campus said in the midst of what the government has been doing negatively in the last five years, it has never wavered in defending the dignity of the Liberian people and the honor of the country against what it called “yo-yo conmen” who have tightened their belts on the national treasury.
“SUP as a revolutionary Pan African institution bestowed with a struggling spirit by history to fight injustice, corruption, bad governance, and menacing social follies of society has been very critical of this CDC- human garbage of a government by exposing its excesses, bankruptcies, and faux pas. Amidst the brutal onslaught waged on the party and its militants by this rascal regime, we have stood tall in its face unmasking its criminal shenanigans and annoying ineptitude. At the peril of our lives, we have kept the banner of resistance high against this Weah Kleptocracy that is teetering our country on the brink of a devastating explosion”, the release said.
It said through press statements, mass rallies, and community engagements, SUP has never ceased blazing the pitfalls and misdemeanors of the regime and telling the state what needs to be done to solve them. It further said that from all indications, it has been established that the government is impaired to heed to genuine policy prescriptions proffered by authentic voices like SUP to remedy the structural imbalances the state is engulfed with.
“On many occasions, the Vanguard Party has called this government to act in ways to build its credibility which would win for them good support from the international community and the Liberian people, yet they have never listened. These criminals behave in such a strange way like they do not have the senses of hearing and seeing”, the party said.
