LIBERIA – The Vanguard Student Unification Party (SUP), a campus-based party at the University of Liberia has, in the strongest term condemned President Weah’s State of Nation Address delivered on Monday, January 30, 2023, at the National Legislature, saying it has been 6 years since the Liberian masses elected Mr. Weah as President of Liberia in 2017; Liberians hopes and aspirations in the hands of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) has proven to be a futile yet a frivolous one.
In a press release issued today, SUP said Liberians thought the ruling CDC could assure them of the tailwind of a fresh and new beginning in national development.
“Today, under the Presidency of Mr. Weah, the nation continues to suffer the bloody scars of corruption, economic inequality, administrative inadequacy, and kleptocratic governance.”
“Like all rational people in history, they did so in search of better living conditions which encompass access to quality education, good and affordable healthcare, agricultural productivity and food security, and security and the protection of basic human rights,” SUP point out in the press release.
The press release continued: “Having these things in mind, especially with the obligation to seek betterment and enhancement in their living conditions, the people would go to gamble on the ballot in 2017 to entrust their hopes and aspirations in the hands of the CDC as an institution that they thought could assure them of the tailwind of a fresh and new beginning in national development.” Below is the full text of SUP’s press release
Vanguard Student Unification Party (SUP)
University of Liberia
Capitol Hill
Monrovia, Liberia
Cell#: 0770179193/ 0777654997
Email: srudentunificationpartysup@gmail.com
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President Weah Dabbles in Falsehoods, Grammatical Miasmas, Deceptions, and Recitations: He Must Fix The Country Now or Pack and Leave: SUP Responds to President George Weah’s 6th and Final State of the Nation Address in the History of Liberia
Comrades in the redemption struggle for the dignity of the oppressed peasantry of our people, the “Fix The University Generation” of the conscious students of the University of Liberia, left-wing student radicals profoundly leading the struggle for the honor of the fatherland, militants, cadres and stalwarts of Africa’s biggest embankment of revolutionary consciousness building and progressive enlightenment- the Vanguard Student Unification Party- SUP, fellow Liberian compatriots;
It has been 6rys since the Liberian masses elected Mr. Weah as President of Liberia. Like all rational people in history, they did so in search of better living conditions which encompass access to quality education, good and affordable healthcare, agricultural productivity and food security, and security and the protection of basic human rights.
Having these things in mind, especially with the obligation to seek betterment and enhancement in their living conditions, the people would go to gamble on the ballot in 2017 to entrust their hopes and aspirations in the hands of the CDC as an institution that they thought could assure them of the tailwind of a fresh and new beginning in national development. Conversely, such a gamble has proven to be a futile yet a frivolous one. Today, under the Presidency of Mr. Weah, the nation continues to suffer the bloody scars of corruption, economic inequality, administrative inadequacy, and kleptocratic governance.
Comrades and Friends
Sadly, 6yrs down the line in national governance, it is now physically profound to express that the Republic stands at a climactic point where the country is decaying due to amplified and intensified misrule that is tagged with gross administrative inadequacy and scantiness. The nation now has a leadership that is a host of glutinous and covetous rascals that defines the theory of governance as a process of self-enrichment and aggrandizement at the detriment of the whole nation instead of seeking the welfare of the people through dignified administrative governance that inspires nationalism and patriotism.
It is now an uncontested fact that traitorous thievery has been normalized, standardized, and formalized in Mr. Weah’s criminal paradise of a fiasco government. The homeland is in the hands of 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 nauseatingly irksome for the Liberian people as discontent, hopelessness, and frustration overwhelm them due to the poor leadership that presides over the Liberian public administration.
Liberia is at a critical juncture where the path to progressive state-building remains elusive to the people, with no hope, and horror has become the official symbol of the country. Bad times and crises have befallen the people thus subjecting the masses of the Liberian people to horror and the furnace of hermitical social throes and whirling economic despondency.
Comrades and fellow compatriots;
Yesterday, the con artist president in Mr. George Weah presented his boring yet overly loaded balderdash of expanded lies and subterfuges of a sixth state of the nation address. Constrained by those raw deceptions and mendacities, and poised with the historical obligation to rebuke irresponsible pretext of leadership, the Vanguard Student Unification Party has come to respond to Mr. Weah’s cacophonous mumbo-jumbo with FIRE and FURY! In what was a very frightening drama of a SONA, Mr. Weah in his irritating yet elementary reading tone failed to address the major problems that impede social advancement; Economy, Education, Agriculture, and Healthcare.
On the Economy:
Comrades and compatriots
Mr. Weah in a shortsighted understanding of the focal engine of macroeconomic stability which depends on the improvement of Inflation, Gross Domestic Product, and Unemployment, went on yesterday to say that the Liberian economy is an exception in the West African Sub-region. How come an exceptional economy in the subregion cannot account for one Foreign Direct Investment after six years?
How come an exceptional economy that is professed to have macroeconomic stability cannot account for job creation and economic empowerment of the Liberian people? How come a so-called stable economy only generates economic hardship and poverty for the people? Weah should ask Tweah to tell the Liberian people which theory of economics argues this concept. Again, Weah went on to hallucinate that he inherited 30% inflation in 2018 and it’s now at 7%., a boldface half-truth.
Inflation was at 12% when Weah took over in 2018. It was due to the gross incompetence and inability of the Weah government to properly manage the economy of the country that fast-speeded inflation to 31% in 2019. A situation that caused serious hardship for the Liberian people and incapacitated the government from regularly paying civil servants on time. This was when Tweah had to sneak into donors’ consolidated accounts to settle civil servants’ salaries. If Weah has forgotten, we haven’t! Weah claimed that the economy is doing well because there has been a stable exchange rate for over two years.
What he fails to understand is that increased economic productivity as a result of an artificial smoothening by the IMF Structural Adjustment Programs is not an impetus for sustainable economic recovery. The day the IMF stops rolling loans to the government, the economy will get more deplorable than it is. This is not how a vibrant economy is built. How is inflation reduction meaningful when prices of basic commodities on the Liberian market are at a skyrocketing pace? But again, Weah doesn’t know these things.
He just reads whatever is given to him by Tweah. On this issue of GDP as a determinant of macroeconomic stability, Mr. Weah inherited a GDP of 3.26Billion and currently, it is estimated to be around 3 Billion. What progress has been made on this front that can be culminated into growth? Unemployment is ever-heightening as there has been no program to create jobs for the people. Perhaps, it’s under the Sycamore Tree that there can be macroeconomic stability without improvements in the GDP and Unemployment rates of a country.
Comrades and compatriots:
The nation is now overwhelmed by economic decadence if not paralysis. Instead of the government normalizing a prosperous economy, the government has normalized an economy that suffers stagflation where there is low economic growth, high inflation, and a high unemployment rate.
Under George Weah, inflation has consumed real wages while the real wage bill of civil servants remains static even though the cost of basic commodities is rapidly snowballing. The harmonization policy went on to further impair the economic output of already underpaid civil servants and pushed more Liberians into untold hardship. The scourge of inflation has struck economic wounds on the masses of the Liberian people and left them to wager in hopelessness and hunger. In the hunger index, Liberia ranks 113th out of 121 countries.
This indicates that Liberia is a starving nation amongst the comity of nations. The nation’s ranks in the human development index are also appalling and awful. Out of 192 countries, Liberia ranks 178 next to war zone countries. As direct victims of these conditions, we are holding the government of Mr. Weah responsible as the government is the creator of these conditions. Under the weah’s administration, the multidimensional poverty rate has grown to 52.3% and the vulnerable population to multidimensional poverty is 23.3%.
This shows to the world and the people that the musical president has skilled the Liberian masses into poverty. As the PADP promised 1 million jobs in 6yrs, youthful unemployment remains all-time high as means of employment remain partisanship, thereby denying qualified and skilled Liberians the opportunity to serve their homeland. Amid all these challenges, president weah abandoned the economy on numerous occasions to either make music or honeymoon abroad in useless travels that have brought no benefit to the country.
Pres. Weah promises to take Liberians from the audience or spectator seat of the economy to a more active, involved, and participative position where the people can earn a decent lifestyle.
Unfortunately, the people have become decorated onlookers and unshakable bystanders of the economy as the president and his collection of criminal cliques and foreign capitalists suck and enjoy the fabric of the economy. Today, 1 million jobs and the liberalization policy is abandoned behind the lip service of incarceration while they prioritize their cronies and foreign capitalist allies in the economy. SUP wants to categorically state that president weah has failed and damaged the Liberian economy. The Liberian people must be told that Mr. Weah couldn’t stabilize the economy for 6yrs in service.
All these years the people have been faced with mounting economic challenges as prices skyrocket on an industrial skill and the government heartlessly reduced the salary of civil servants. The wage bill of teachers, officers, nurses, doctors, army personnel, and civil servants remains very low while the economic thugs of the Weah-led government are criminally enriching themselves and sunbathing in opulence at the disservice of the people. On the economic front, the regime of Mr. Weah has been an unimaginable disaster.
On Education
Comrades and compatriots:
Mr. Weah through the PAPD told the Liberian people that investment in human capital will be a national priority. The president promised massive school enrollment and the construction of TVET institutions to hasten national consciousness and empowerment.
Lamentably for the people and the republic, the president has disastrously failed on these promises in short, medium, and long terms plus all other forms that one may imagine. SUP is asking Mr. Weah the following as promised in the PAPDP: why has the Early Childhood Education (ECE) student-to-classroom ratio not been reduced below 50:1 in all counties? Why have you not ensured that 70% of male and female Senior High School Students pass WASSCE with a score of Division 1-6? Why are School renovation and classroom construction in targeted counties where ECE classes are overcrowded still invisible? Where are the New and existing school’s construction and upgrading of facilities? Where are the Upgraded 4 TVET institutes? Where is the Constructed housing for teachers in remote communities?
Under the weah’s leadership, the education sector of 19,763 STAFFERS and more than 2 million students are subjected to less than 10% budgetary support even though universal protocol obligates governments everywhere to accost 20% budgetary support to education. It is an unarguable fact that Liberia is the only country in the ECOWAS region that is spending less than 20% on education ex. Ghana is 18% and Sierra Leone is 30%.
What a national shame under a pro-poor government that professes to be at the service of the people. The president has shown zero attention to the advancement of the Education Sector for the period in national service thus far. Like other budget years, since the inception of the weah’s administration, the current budgetary allotment of the education sector is an insufficient 96.7M which is a drop in the ocean to handle the appalling challenges of the sector and as well as strengthen and fortify the academic capacity of students as a way of inspiring national development and growth.
SUP believes the continued action of the CDC administration to underfund the education sector is because the government is presided over by a president who is more interested in generating wealth than providing education for the Liberian people. In yesterday’s position, Mr. Weah openly lied that his government had spent over US 38 million on the renovation of public universities and other high schools in Liberia.
To the contrary, the University of Liberia and Tubman University continue to lie in ruins. Government and Public high schools are so deplorable with notable shortages in quality instructors, over-congested classes and poor learning facilities. Thousands of children below the age of 12 continue to miss out on basic primary education in Liberia. Today, the number of children selling in the street has doubled compared to 2017. This is a rueful predicament of the Education Sector on the failed Leadership of Mr. Weah…
On Agriculture
Comrades and compatriots:
The Agricultural Sector commands the greatest possibility of absorbing our people into employment. The high level of unemployment in the country can only be mitigated if the government sees the urgency to massively invest in the agriculture sector. The sector can also assure our people of food security and adequacy. As the PAPD promises, by 2023, Liberia will have a more competitive and diversified agricultural sector that promotes value chains for food self-sufficiency, increased exports, job creation, and livelihood opportunities. For Liberia to realize its potential for sustained economic growth, implementation of the LASIP II must be accelerated.
Sadly, the PAPD contains ambitious promises that have not been backed by practical support and further shadowed by incompetence and massive corruption in the Agricultural sector. Since the CDC took national office, agriculture has suffered intensified abandonment as the budgetary support of the sector have never reach 5% as it still drags in less than the 2% range. The CDC of Mr. Weah has massively pulverized the hopes of the people and students, especially the students of the University of Liberia, who are studying agriculture and hoping for employment in the agricultural sector.
In a pro-poor government that should be significantly investing in the agricultural sector, the government is allotting an insufficient 5 million to the sector. How can this figure make any significant progress in a sector that lacks almost everything that is required for a productive and prosperous sector? SUP believes that Mr. Weah has taken the Agricultural Sector to a new chapter of food insecurity while the Liberian people are left to suffer the consequences of malnutrition and undernourishment.
Today in Liberia, WHO has estimated that one in every three children in Liberia suffers malnutrition as a result of food insecurity, lack of access to healthcare and lack of employment opportunities for their parents. More children continue to go to bed with hunger as many more continue to die from starvation, lack of safe drinking water and quality food. The only active and functional plan we undoubtedly believe that the government has worked with in the six years in service is to constantly beg for food in foreign lands.
Agriculture is the future of the Liberian economy any government that is serious about initiating radical social transformation would focus much attention on bettering the Agro sector. Not just with empty figments of the imagination of policies but well-thought-of and scientific policies backed by practical action geared towards empowering the local farmers with both resources and material implements. Like Mao would do in China and Lee Kuan Yew would do inSingapore. But again, Weah knows nothing about these things.
Mr. Weah met Liberia as a country rattled by food insecurity and Mr. Weah will be leaving Liberia as a country still suffering from food insecurity.
On Healthcare
Comrades and Compatriots:
In the boring, overly loaded yet tasteless baloney of a SONA yesterday, Weah failed to adequately address the issues concerning the health sector of the country. And we understand why. That he has insignificantly contributed anything serious to making the sector vibrant to serve the needs of the masses of the Liberian people.
After five years, all the public health facilities across the country are in a deplorable state. The Health sector is in shambles and turmoils. Curable illnesses like malaria and typhoid can’t even be cured by public hospitals and medical centers. No drugs in the hospitals and clinics. Health workers continue to strike due to poor and delayed salaries. Life expectancy under the Weah government remains ever-low.
In Montserrado, where everything is centralized, the people do not have any good access to affordable and quality healthcare services. If such is the condition here, just imagine what the Liberian people in the countryside endure. Sadly, this is the state of healthcare under Weah. Nothing has changed in Liberia. The patient to doctor ratio remains at the bare minimum. Liberia continues to boost only one medical school for a population of almost over 5 millions. In the health sector, it has been nothing but rottenness and failures.
The eight achievable targets of the PADP from 2018 to 2023 is a massive failure as the government has demonstrated no serious effort to that effect. The health sector has suffered mammoth under-support as 12489 employees and the more than a million citizens of the republic have submitted to 75, 521,692.
Rule of Law and National Security
Comrades and Compatriots:
On January 22, 2018, Mr. Weah took an oath to protect, preserve, and defend the constitution of the republic of Liberia. Unfortunately for the state, the President who took an oath to protect and defend the constitution degenerated into a monstrous constitutional delinquent and has since stood on a firm ground of deviancy disrupting and violating every trend of the constitution like the nomination and subsequent commissioning of George Patten as Liberia Ambassador to the United States without the consent of Liberia Senate, which undermines article 58, the delay in conducting the National Housing and Population Census, the illegal and unconstitutional removal of Justice Janeh from the Supreme Court Bench, just to name few.
Under the Weah-led government, the constitution and the basic laws of the country suffer willful and calculated neglect as Mr. Weah preferably runs the country with visible dictatorial tendencies while at the same time basking in the gutter of gross human capital bankruptcy and incompetence.
The CDC of George Weah operates a gangster and paramilitary group that they have used over the last five years to inflict bodily wounds on people who are very critical of their misrule and mismanagement of the resources of the country. This assassin group is what they have used to eliminate critics and brutalized vocal voices against their vices, like the infamous violent assault against peaceful university students under the banner of SUP, on July 26, 2022, a plot fully masterminded by Weah himself and carried out through the thuggish Monrovia City Mayor in Jefferson Koijee.
The violent upsurge against university students on the 31st of March 2022, at the Homegoing ceremony of the late Dr. Sawyer, on the instructions of Koijee as well as many others. This is the level at which the state has crumbled to the dogs. And all these violent heaves against peaceful citizens are yet to be investigated one day by the Justice Minister in Musah Dean.
Comrades and Friends
As this president came to power through constitutional adherence from his predecessor, this president couldn’t conduct timely by-elections and the national census in line with the modus operandi of the constitution of the country.
The maritime Law of Liberia, the national lottery law of Liberia, the unconstitutional appointment and commissioning of Liberia’s ambassador to the United States, and the refusal of the president to declare his assets in line with the 2014 code of conduct are all blatant violations of the organic laws of the country. Additionally, the numerous state-sponsored attacks against innocent citizens and student leaders at the University of Liberia are violations of the democratic laws of the people and students. SUP believes that the constitution and basic laws of the republic were the most victimized in the six-year misrule of the mafia in George Weah.
As a result of the attacks on the rule of law, the Liberian people have suffered a high level of insecurity; this has led to a high level of arm robbery and mysterious deaths in the country. Investors and business people have also lost confidence in the country because of heightened insecurity. Under Weah, Liberia is a “Wrong Turn” as every day comes with a new mysterious death. National Security is so volatile to the extent that Weah has irresponsibly asked citizens to buy for themselves CCTV cameras. What a Banana Republic Liberia has become with the Weah~CDC calamity!
Comrades and compatriots:
After dabbling with inconsistencies and manufactured falsehoods, as if he had realized the colossal damages he has caused the people of this country and how the image of the homeland has been ruined on the international front, Weah went to declare his re-election bid in his claptrap of a SONA. Before this, in a false attempt of encouraging young people, Weah went on to misinterpret a historical episode that the Vanguard Party must correct here before going any further.
First, the Rice Demonstration took place on April 14, 1979, and not the historical inaccuracy of 1980, as narrowly understood by the conman of a President. The political development of 1979 is what birthed this democracy that is now being bastardized by people like Weah. People paid the ultimate price with their lives to ensure that a democratic Liberia is possible today and the vulgar view purveyed by little men like Weah; little men who are so little in the thought processes.
Overall, President Weah’s SONA was a 3hr 30mins waste of time not only that he failed to address the most pressing issues facing the Liberian people but was unable to tell us for the past 6 years where he took the country from, where we are currently as a nation and people and where we’re going. Therefore, it was a tasteless moment of not just the usual mumbo-jumbo recitation and mistakes of Mr. Weah over the years but it was a moment of truth that Liberia has not improved in no facet for the last 6 years just as Mr. Weah himself has not been able to improve intellectually when his delivering his speeches… Weah is nothing but a Liar Man!!
Finally, the last six years have condemned our people to shady living conditions. Before their eyes, they have witnessed you and your cabal of social misfits and career racketeers of cabinet amassed wealth and begin living luxury lifestyles you couldn’t afford some years ago. They have seen you brazenly brutalize the national treasury for your self-amusement while they go to bed with a fire in their wrangled stomachs. Before their eyes, the masses see their children’s dreams rot in the wasteland with little or nothing to do about developing them while you and your clique live the most fashionable level of comfort.
A whole generation has gone to forceful drug and prostitution, brilliant and talented young people, yet after six years, you do nothing about these situations. The masses in the shantytowns and ghetto communities who have known and lived hunger, despair, and frustration are the motor forces that are going to determine whether you will return to the Executive Mansion after October this year or you will be given the red ballot. The masses you promised to create jobs for thus alleviating 1 million of them from abject poverty, a hot air of a promise that is forever not coming, these are the people that will determine your second term.
The masses you made 292 promises to with only 8% of the promises implemented, the general and broader resilient masses of the Liberian people whose hopes and aspirations you dashed in the pit of history since your inception, these are the people that are going to make the supreme decision in October!
Notwithstanding, as a movement in the struggle of the people, the Vanguard Student Unification Party has got a historical mandate of building consciousness in the people and educating them on the state of affairs of the country in guiding them to make rational decisions. And we shall play this role honorable as we march to October. As we have refuted the lies and exposed the shenanigans of Weah SONA, we are going to ensure that a credible, free, fair, and transparent electoral process is conducted in October and that the voice of the people is respected as per the side they will choose for leadership.
Decadence, mass looting, economic collapse, volatile national security and violation of the constitution in gargantuan fashion and despicable suffering on the people, this the state of affairs under Weah and his CDC rule over the last five years!
FixTheCountry!
Long Live Massecracy- Long Live SUP!
Gwei Fei Kpeh- The struggle continues!
DONE ON THIS 31st DAY OF JANUARY AD 2023 BY MANDATE OF THE 31ST POLITBURO AND CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE EVER-POTENT VANGUARD STUDENT UNIFICATION PARTY
Signed: _______________________
Cde. Jusu Kamara
Secretary-General/ SUP
Approved: _____________________
Cde. Mustapha N.Kanneh
Chairman/SUP
