George K. Fahnbulleh

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it" ~ George Orwell

I read with the utmost amount of shame and disgust, the recent 17 (seventeen) page missive, by a national security operative of the Government of Liberia, Grant Solomon, against the former Justice Minister of Liberia, Christiana Tah. Three months after Madame Tah resigned from the Sirleaf government, the government is still undertaking an intense effort to discredit her. To me, it is evident the President and her National Security Team feel the need to impeach her credibility, to preempt and discredit anything she may say about her time in government.

I have included in this paper, an extensive bibliography, to demonstrate to the "security researcher" that when you write a 17 page document, you should include information which can be verified.

The manner of Madame Tah’s resignation, and the insight it provided into the President’s actions in obstructing investigations, was unlike any other resignation in this government.ⁱ

That fear was evident and confirmed in a letter to Madame Tah by the National Security Council, in which the government believed it was necessary to "admonish" Madame Tah, a lawyer, of her obligation not to divulge "state secrets."

Ironically, the people demanding she maintain secrecy, are now spreading gossip, not only about the workings of the Ministry of Justice, under Tah, but about her place of birth, her family life.

There are so many things that are disgusting and false about this piece, it is difficult to even begin to organize my thoughts. Some of the things that jump out at the reader, are not only the venom and vitriol in the letter, but the pettiness.

The piece does not simply deal with Madame Tah’s tenure at the Ministry of Justice, but delves into her personal life and attacks her marriage and her children. This is something low class people do. Mr. Solomon writes:

"She is married to Dr. Tah, a gynecologist, and almost twenty years her senior. The union is blessed with two children, a young lad, of less significance to society, and a budding young lady who is a caricature of her mother’s dual personality."

How is the age difference in a person’s marriage the concern of the national security agency? Mr. Solomon refers to Madam Tah’s son, who is autistic as "a young lad, of less significance to society." Thankfully, the young man is a citizen of a country, America, which values all of its citizens, even the ones with disabilities. What kind of human beings, let alone a President, and her National Security Team, attacks an autistic child to go after his mother?

Solomon goes on to say of Tah’s daughter "a budding young lady who is a caricature of her mother’s dual personality." This young lady has excelled with multiple degrees from some of the top universities in the world.

Although Mr. Solomon states Tah has the following academic credentials:

1. Masters in Sociology / Corrections – Kent State University
2. LLB Law Degree – Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law
3. LLM Law Degree - Yale Law School

He attempts to diminish her credentials by suggesting she graduated from the Grimes Law School with a 2.1 GPA, when in fact she graduated Magna Cum Laude.

According to the Yale Law School website "Applicants for the LL.M. program must have completed their law degree at an accredited U.S. law school or a non-U.S. law school with substantially equivalent standards, and must have a strong record of academic accomplishment."ⁱⁱ

We are to be convinced that a person with a 2.1 GPA met the "strong record of academic accomplishment" required by Yale Law School.

The leaves one to wonder, why are these people so insecure that they seek to diminish the accomplishment of others.

It also begs the question: why would the President, not once, but twice, appoint a person of such low academic standing, first as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and later as Justice Minister?

The answer to the first question can be found in the President’s autobiography, "This Child Will Be Great." This is a woman who has been able to con the world that she is a "Harvard trained economist" over the past 12 years, when in fact, she has a 2 year degree from Madison Business College^IV, described in Wikipedia as:

"Madison Business College was the name of a business college in Madison, Wisconsin, founded in 1858. It was also known as Northwestern Business College and School of Shorthand, Capital City Commercial College, Madison College, Madison Junior College, and Madison Junior Business College; it closed on September 22, 1998."

She was able, through her work with the Government of Liberia, to parlay that 2 year degree into a 9 credit certificate program designed specifically for people from third world countries, by Harvard. Lawrence Summers, the former US treasury secretary, is a Harvard trained economist.

It is also noteworthy that this president has managed to drive out of her government just about every woman of qualification and substance including Antoinette Sayeh and Olubanke King-Akerele. Imagine a woman president who despises competent women; quite the contradiction.

The NSA robs Korean Businessmen

What seems to strike a raw nerve with the President and her entire National Security Team, was the public disclosure by Madame Tah, of the President’s refusal for the Ministry of Justice to investigate allegations of robbery against agents of the National Security Agency made by Korean businessmen.

Madame Tah’s allusion to this incident, in her resignation statement, so irked the President, that New York Times writer, cum Sirleaf biographer[i], Helene Cooper attempted to cast aspersions and derision on it, in her October 30, 2014 article.  Ms. Cooper wrote:

“Ms. Tah, used her resignation news conference to accuse Ms. Johnson Sirleaf of trying to block a corruption investigation into Liberia’s National Security Agency, which is headed by another of the president’s sons. Ms. Johnson Sirleaf denied the charge; it was the same son, Fumbah Sirleaf, who helped American agents pull off West Africa’s largest drug bust in 2010.”

The crime was initially reported on extensively by the National Chronicle, in a series of articles:

1. In Alleged Organized Crime "Gold, Diamond Deal":NSA, Lebanese National Rob Koreans Of US$284,000
2. After Sharing Korean Businessmen’s US$284,300: NSA Aids Lebanese Man To Escape

On August 14, 2014, officers of the Police Support Unit (PSU) barricaded and tear-gassed the offices of the National Chronicle, seized computers and arrested its editor, Phillibert Browne. On September 9, 2013, the Police Director, Christian Massaquoi barred Mr. Browne from traveling. The raid was ordered directly by the President of Liberia, bypassing the Ministry of Justice.

The Ministry of Justice’s attempts to take hold of the investigation were thwarted by the Executive Mansion. In a letter dated July, 11, 2014 the Deputy Minister of Justice for Administration and Public Safety, Wheatonia Y. Dixon Barnes wrote:

"We are indeed very concerned about the legal implication this issue poses to the Government of Liberia (GOL), and the potential negative impact it may have on investors. In this connection, therefore, we advise that you forward this matter to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) for a thorough investigation in conjunction with the NSA. To protect the integrity of the process, we further advise that the amount in question be deposited into an escrow account until the legality of this issue is determined. Additionally, we request that you stay all forms of investigation with respect to this case pending our joint sitting."

Those instructions were never carried out, even though, by law, the Director of the National Security Agency is required to "report to the President through the Ministry of Justice on all Matters affecting the work of the Agency, as circumstances may require or as directed by the President." The law further requires the Ministry of Justice to "issue orders and regulations with the approval of the president with regards to the performance of such additional function as circumstances may dictate for securing the safety of the State." The National Security Agency can give no account of the money, seized by its agents.

Solomon, who claims he is a "security researcher" has obviously never heard of the internet. He tries to pin the dismissal of Deputy Minister Barnes on Madam Tah, when the Executive Mansion website, on September 13, 2014, posted a list of three deputy Ministers from Justice who were dismissed by the President being "out of the country without an excuse."

Why concoct a fantastical lie, when the information is readily available?

The fact is the President dismissed three of Minister Tah’s Deputies even after Minister Tah submitted medical excuses and pleaded in person for mercy for the three Ministers. The real target of the dismissals at Justice was Wheatonia Barnes, because of the instructions she gave Fumba Sirleaf, noted above. The President could not stomach the idea that any person would instruct her son to hold on to evidence of a crime. The other two ministers were simply collateral damage.

We are supposed to believe that 5 rogue agents, seized nearly $250,000 dollars and that money was never turned over to the authorities within the agency?

Madame Tah’s assertions were vindicated when the Special Independent Committee set up by the President, to bypass the Ministry of Justice, and "to investigate accusations of money laundering, counterfeiting, illegal arrest, and conspiracy to defraud" the Korean businessmen made 3 findings and recommendations, which were:

1. Appropriate administrative actions be taken against the operatives of the National Security Agency (five in all) who were directly involved with the arrest of the Korean and Sierra Leonean nationals immediately.
   
   
2. The operatives of the National Security Agency (five in all) who were directly involved with the arrest of the Korean and Sierra Leonean nationals, and their co-conspirators (two who do not work with the NSA) be handed over to the Ministry of Justice for prosecution in order to clear the name and image of the National Security Agency.
   
   
3. The Government of Liberia refunds to the Korean nationals the full amount of US$247,500, which they withdrew from the International Bank of Liberia (IBLL) on July 8, 2014, and which they proceeded with directly to the City King Hotel, immediately thereafter, and were arrested shortly after their arrival. Liberian Observer 11/10/2014
   

The President’s attempt to shield her son, and obstruct justice cannot go unnoticed, especially when one considers that one of the NSA agents involved in this robbery, Terrence Doe, has an extensive criminal record in the United States. Doe was tried and acquitted on double murder charges in New Jersey. The question on everyone’s mind, is how, did a career criminal become an agent of the National Security Agency? Perhaps, her son, Fumba Sirleaf can answer that.

NSA robs Nigerian Businessman

Incidentally, this is not the first time agents of the NSA have robbed foreign businessmen in Liberia. In September of 2006, NSA agents confiscated $508,000.00 from a Nigerian businessman, under the guise that the Nigerian was a drug dealer and counterfeiter. The businessman, Valentine Ayika, went on to become a member of the Nigerian parliament. Mr. Ayika sued the government of Liberia in the ECOWAS Court, and in the case Valentine Ayika v Republic of Liberia, the court "ordered the return of $508, 200 dollars by the Liberian Government to Mr Valentine Ayika.

The presiding judge, Justice Hansine Donli, held that the plaintff, Ayika, was exonerated from drug trafficking and money laundering by an investigative team in Liberia.  Donli said Ayika was not indicted by the investigative team and that Liberian Government had no legal justification to confiscate the said money."

President Sirleaf stubbornly refused to obey the ruling of the Court until Liberia’s seat on the Court was denied.

How does one explain, the same agency, committing two of the same kind of robberies, yet expect us to believe the head of the agency knew nothing about it? 

The Cockrum Meeting

Again, Mr. Solomon, the security researcher, tries to place the blame for the Cockrum tapes on Madame Tah. I know both Melvin Johnson and Ellen Cockrum, and I know they have never met with Madame Tah.

The Golden Child

It seems the President and her minions, are still trying to wrap their heads around the terrible election thumping of her golden child, Robert Sirleaf, at the hands of George Weah. This 78% - 11% drubbing of the golden child, has left the President and her inner circle in total shock and disarray. They understand that this was a vote that says the President has no legacy. For all of the love and adulation, they twice showed the President, she has abused them, abused their trust to please her golden child and minions. Coupled with the complete collapse of the healthcare system when the Ebola epidemic hit, after 9 years in office, the Liberian people want nothing to do with anything or anybody named Sirleaf anymore.

Sadly, rather than working to salvage what is left of her tattered legacy, the President is hell bent on settling scores with her former Justice Minister, and anyone she imagines an enemy. This is unwise, and ill advised. I will encourage Madame Tah to speak to the Liberian people, at the time and place of her choosing. 

The reason for highlighting with documentary evidence, unlike our erstwhile security researcher, Mr. Solomon, is to show that he is a liar, a person in a long tradition of government liars which date back to the Tubman era of the Public Relations Officers (PRO’s). They authored documents, wrote "secret memoranda" which they claimed they found in women’s shoes. It is pathetic, that this Continuing Criminal Enterprise which calls itself the Government of Liberia, has decided it will publish lies about a person who has served the Liberian people faithfully

In his recent piece titled “In Liberia: George Werner Unqualified for Minister of Health”, Mr. George Fahnbulleh writes to oppose the appointment and nomination of the designee.  Fahnbulleh makes a strong case against the Minister-designate first by claiming and presenting evidence to indicate that he (the designee) is unqualified to hold the position, and secondly, that he (the designee) lied to bolster his resume. 

That he is not qualified to hold the position should come as no surprise to those who follow the appointment patterns in the present administration. President Sirleaf has demonstrated a strange proclivity for appointing unqualified candidates to prestigious and powerful positions in her government. It would probably be unfair to Mr. Werner to oppose his appointment on the basis of lack of requisite experience. The second charge is, in my opinion, more damaging: He deliberately embellished his professional record. To put it more bluntly, he lied.

I read the article published on the Daily Observer in which Mr. Werner claimed to have been a “therapist” and a “clinician”. See here: http://liberianobserver.com/news/meet-liberia%E2%80%99s-new-health-minister-designate... Obviously, the words were used loosely here in layman terms. However, Mr. Werner should know the professional definitions of the words he used to describe himself. As Mr. Fahnbulleh points out, one needs professional licenses to practice as a “clinician” and a “therapist”. Mr. Werner chose to deliberately lie to augment his credentials; he should be questioned about his statements and made to provide proof of the claims he makes. Upon failure to do so, his nomination should be rejected.

"A clinician is a health care practitioner that works as a primary care giver of a patient in a hospital setting, pre-hospital setting, clinic setting, or under the Affordable Care Act in home health care. Only a clinician diagnoses, prescribes treatment, treats, and discharges patients from therapy. For example, a physician is a clinician, a nurse is not."
http://bit.ly/1FCce3Q 

It could be argued that the political environment in Liberia is so morally contaminated, perhaps it shouldn’t matter that one candidate has lied. After all, doesn’t everybody else? It would be a pointlessly humongous task to point out similar discrepancies in the present administration. Seemingly, such lies and embellishments are the natural order of the day. One could even argue that it is unfair to single out Mr. Werner for scrutiny at this time. After all, the president moves the former Minister of Education to the position of National Investment Commissioner. Some fair questions would be, is the candidate qualified for that position? What are her credentials and professional track record? Is she qualified solely on the basis of the mere possession of a PhD? Does holding a PhD mean she knows anything about investments? The African “book-man-mentality” rules the day in Liberia. Once a candidate possesses a terminal degree that candidate is qualified to hold any position, no matter the discipline. The idea of specialization does not come into play in Liberia, unfortunately.

President Sirleaf has also recently appointed Mr. Gyude Moore to the position of Public Works Minister. Mr. Moore is said to have obtained an MBA (Masters in Business of Administration) from the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington, DC, USA. But is he the best qualified candidate for such a position? If one were to question the president’s preference in this matter, one has to realize the pattern the president has set: She appointed the late Willis Knuckles to the position and later on appointed Kofi Woods to the same portfolio. Nine years after her ascendancy to the presidency she claims that Liberia is still suffering from the devastation brought on by the civil war that ended over a decade ago. But how does she intend to remedy the problem by these senseless appointments?  What did she expect Mr. Knuckles or Mr. Woods to accomplish in terms of improving the state of public works in Liberia besides personally enriching themselves? Nothing. And nothing was accomplished.

In this new package of appointments, one has to also question the motive of the president appointing Dr. Wede Brownell to the position of Deputy Foreign Minister for Administration. After receiving a PhD in Accounting or Business Administration, Dr. Brownell taught at a university in the states for a brief period before accepting a highly acclaimed academic position at the University of Liberia. After a publicly contentious stay in that position, she was forced to flee. All of a sudden Dr. Brownell is named Deputy Foreign Minister? If she were trained to be an academician but miserably failed in that line of work, we are now led to believe that she will perform with stellar acclaim in a setting about which she knows nothing. Astounding logic, one must admit.

Again, in all fairness, perhaps we should not be questioning the appointment of Mr. Werner to the sensitive post while ignoring the rest of the package. After all, Mr. Werner is a very intelligent person with ample academic qualifications as the president’s other appointees; all the president’s nominees should be given equal scrutiny. So what sets Mr. Werner aside? Simple. He lied. His lie is a public lie and deserves the public scrutiny it invites. Mr. Werner should have stayed the course and remained silent on the sidelines as his confirmation battle before the Liberian legislature ensued. But because of over-ambition and reckless boldness, he has overplayed his card to ensure his success; that tactic has backfired. His nomination has been rejected, although he has previously passed confirmation before the same body.

But if one were to accept the allegation that the national state of affairs in Liberia has degenerated to a morally contaminated environment, why should we care about Mr. Werner’s appointment? After all, it might be a cynical ploy for the legislature to exploit the executive. They could be rejecting his nomination now only to put pressure on the president; they might be holding out for approval until certain bargains are made and they might approve the nomination subsequently. If that is the case, as we have seen before, what will have been gained by opposing this nomination now?

The answer is simple: Our opposition to this appointment must be a matter of record. Other Liberians are free to support Mr. Werner, and I’m quite sure they do and will continue to do so. Our opposition may not matter in substance, but let it be a matter of record; not just for the present-day record, but for the sake of posterity. If anyone were to re-examine or question this appointment in a future generation, let the record show that George Fahnbulleh opposes it and I support Mr. Fahnbulleh. In my particular case, I specifically oppose the nomination because Mr. Werner is on record of lying to the Liberian public; I consider that a grievous offense.

At a time when Liberia’s health system has been decimated by the Ebola Virus Disease, and the management has shown inept and incompetent, the President of Liberia, has chosen to name a person totally unqualified to lead in the building of the healthcare system.

Liberians have quickly forgotten, just a few months ago, our President was begging the world for help or the country would die.  The international community has rushed in, and seeing the need to make a change at the Ministry of Health, the President appointed George Werner as the new Minister of Health.

The problem is Mr. Werner has no background in healthcare, zero, nada, zip, nothing!  He has taken to embellishment of his work in a Philadelphia Group Home (6 years and 9 months) and referred to his title as a “Clinical Therapist.”  Much of the information which follows was garnered directly from Mr. Werner’s LinkedIn page, and further research into the institutions he lists.

Sadly neither the Government of Liberia, nor the Liberian newspapers even took the time (all of 3 hours) to research and validate any of the claims made by Mr. Werner.  They have all simply parroted Mr. Werner’s statements and wished him well.

According to Mr. Werner’s LinkedIn page:

June 2003 – March 2010 
Therapist
Pennsylvania Clinical Schools

Pennsylvania Clinical Schools was a residential treatment facility (a group home) run by the State of Pennsylvania for wayward youth.  The facility was closed in 2010.

Because the facility was closed, there is no way to verify, what Mr. Werner actually did at the facility other than being a group home aid.  There are however, several studied deductions we can make which support the fact that Mr. Werner was not, repeat, was not a “Clinical Therapist.”  

To be a Clinical Therapist, in most US states, requires a state occupation license.  The State of Pennsylvania is one of those states.  Fortunately Pennsylvania publishes the license of every practitioner.  Pennsylvania also grants licenses by reciprocity with other states, and those licenses acquired in other states are documented in the database.  You can search the Pennsylvania License Database here. 

The Pennsylvania License Database show NO RECORD of GEORGE KRONNISANYON WERNER ever having a license as anything, in Pennsylvania or any other state, let alone a “group/clinical” therapist.

In a 2005 piece written for the Perspective, entitled “Perceptions and Beliefs about Interpersonal Violence” Mr. Werner was already brandishing his 2 years as a group home aid (he began working at PCS in June 2003), and referring to himself as a “clinician.” 

Mr. Werner wrote:

“As a clinician, one hopes to help ameliorate the effects of interpersonal violence on society’s most vulnerable and to be a part of discovering the causes of interpersonal violence. However one evaluates interpersonal violence, there are grim consequences for victim, perpetrator, and the wider society. Individuals who commit acts of violence against others, like my father, are human beings in need of some degree of rehabilitation.”

This leaves me wondering why Mr. Werner did not channel his expertise to the rehabilitation of ex-combatants in Liberia?

March 2010 – September 2010
Clinical Coordinator
Resources for Human Development, Inc.

Resources for Human Development, Inc. is an organization which among other things, provides staffing and management of group home workers.  A search of employment opportunities from their website (http://www.rhd.org/RHDCareers/JobListings.aspx), the job of a Care Coordinator is described here:

“The Care Coordinator is responsible for providing supportive services to individuals with mental illness living independently in the community. The Care Coordinator assists the program participant to identify and connect with community resources, monitors the progress of each participant toward obtaining goals, and provides ongoing coaching to support participant’s wellness.”

This was the last job Mr. Werner held in the United States, for 7 months.  Can any person read the job description and try to make the case that this job provides the requisite experience to be Minister of Health of Liberia? 

Civil Service Agency:
2013 – Present

Mr. Werner as served for 14 months as the Director General of the CSA.  Somehow after 14 months at CSA, with his other experience shown above, we are to accept that he is qualified to be Minister of Health.

I would challenge Mr. Werner to go beyond phrases like “I was admitted into the prestigious program.”  Being admitted to a program means nothing. Why did he not say “I completed..”

None of what Mr. Werner has presented of his background and experience qualifies him to be Minister of Health.

There are far more qualified Liberians, IN LIBERIA and Internationally whose leadership, experience, and domain knowledge far exceed the group home knowledge of Mr. Werner, who are qualified for the job.  

President Sirleaf needs to take the lives of the Liberian people, and her job, much more seriously.

The recent Emergency Powers requested by the President of Liberia are nothing more than her asking for a license to steal.   This is nothing more than an attempt, by the president, to dispossess Liberians of their rights and properties and give them no judicial recourse. It is theft.  I will deal with only three of the changes the President requested.  

7. Article 24 of the Liberian Constitution (1986). Appropriation of Property

The President may, by proclamation, appropriate any private property or prevent the use thereof in order to protect the public health and safety during the state of emergency without payment of any kind or any further judicial process. Provided however, that the property will be released to the rightful owners upon the end of the state of emergency and that the government pays for any damages thereto.

The President already has the authority to do what she deems necessary under the Public Health Law, as well as the Eminent Domain clause of the Constitution.

Article 15
a) While the inviolability of private property shall be guaranteed by the Republic, expropriation may be authorized for the security of the nation in the event of armed conflict or where the public health and safety are endangered or for any other public purposes, provided:
     (i) that reasons for such expropriation are given;
     (ii) that there is prompt payment of just compensation;
     (iii) that such expropriation or the compensation offered may be challenged freely by the owner of the property in a court of law with no penalty for having brought such action; and
    (iv) that when property taken for public use ceases to be so used, the Republic shall accord the former owner or those entitled to the property through such owner, the right of first refusal to reacquire the property.

b) All real property held by a person whose certificate of naturalization has been cancelled shall escheat to the Republic, unless such person shall have a spouse and/or lineal heirs who are Liberian citizens, in which case the real property shall be transferred to them in accordance with the intestacy law.

c) The power of the Legislature to provide punishment for treason or other crimes shall not include a deprivation or forfeiture of the right of inheritance, although its enjoyment by the convicted person shall be postponed during a term of imprisonment judicially imposed; provided that if the convicted person has minor children and a spouse, the spouse or next of kin in the order of priority shall administer the same. No punishment shall preclude the inheritance, enjoyment or forfeiture by others entitled thereto of any property which the convicted person at the time of conviction or subsequent thereto may have possessed.

I read Minister Lewis Brown's response to the Press Statement by the former Justice Minister, and wondered what manner of people are Liberia's leaders who are incapable of introspection.  Mr. Brown, as usual, was in full uninformed attack mode.  Rather than focus on the substance of the Madam Tah's statement, which has resonated across the globe as a scathing indictment of the President and the Government, Mr. Brown chose to be, well...Mr. Brown (see Mr. Brown from the TV Show).

One would think, any response coming from an official government source, would be based on deep introspection, reason, and judgment.  It is clear neither the government nor Min. Brown seem capable of that.

In his very first paragraph Mr. Brown deliberately misrepresents that Madam Tah "finally mustered the courage to exercise her prerogative to resign."  Did Mr. Brown's boss, President Sirleaf, not inform him of the Minister's resignation of March 31, 2014?  Mr. Brown the Minister resigned on March 31, while still under suspension.  Your boss has that resignation letter.  It would be in the best interest of full disclosure that she release to the Liberian public a full copy of the original letter of resignation.

I, for one, am curious, as to why the President refused to accept the original letter of resignation?

As several legal scholars have already written, the President did not give any substantial weight to the precedent set under her by allowing the Court to remove a member of the Cabinet from his / duties.  I continue to believe, the President colluded with the Court to orchestrate the suspension, because she wanted to accomplish other nefarious goals which Minister Tah would not allow. 

If one must listen to people opine about actions of the Judiciary, one should listen to legal scholars who understand legal doctrine.  As is usually the problem in Liberia, people do not know how to "stay in their lane."   In the case of Minister Brown, he should pull off the road entirely.  

Was Minister Brown aware, that Madam Tah returned to Liberia even as the Ebola epidemic was growing, and the president already had her resignation letter in hand?  And he wants to talk about mustering courage?  What exactly did she have to gain? She could have demanded then that the President accept her resignation.  

Now, it is not clear to anyone why Minister Brown thinks that Minister Tah will be angry when she has been magnanimous to return to work and help this Government that is now spiraling into an abyss, without complaining, after her rights were abused by the Judiciary with the complicity and endorsement of President Sirleaf.  It is, rather, the Government that is angry and embarrassed by the forthrightness of the former Minister, which it is incapable of responding to.

Please tell us "what bigger interest" of the Liberian people is served, when the Minister of Justice, cannot investigate allegations of fraud against other government agencies? Or is it just the National Security Agency, which happens to be headed by her son?  You have the audacity to talk about "teaching by good examples?"

Minister Brown, please tell us what "bigger interest" of the Liberian people was served, when the President decided that the Security services under the State of Emergency would be under the control of the Minister of Defense, as opposed to the Minister of Justice where it belonged?

Do you understand this directly contributed to the death of a Liberian citizen, Shaki Kamara.  Apparently, it has not occurred to you and your boss, that her decision to place command where it should not be placed, had consequences for the Liberian people.  I do not need to remind you of the public beat down by the American ambassador regarding the misuse of the Army.  

How does it serve the Liberian people's "bigger interest" when a president, in office is so consumed by petty parochial interests that her decisions lead to the death of a Liberian citizen, and international rebuke?

I also find especially troubling, the misogyny and sexism you demonstrate when you state "the former Minister may be deeply beholden to the human emotions of bitterness and anger."  What is it about crude men like you that you would seek to dismiss the statement from a Minister of Justice as “emotional?”  

Minister Brown, let me suggest, that you resist the urge for your natural tendency to be a fanatic, confer with the President and cabinet, and decide what the government's official response is to the indictment made by the former Minister of Justice.

You seem eager to tell us of your meeting on October 4, where the President expressed concerns about corruption investigations, where she stated there were no sacred cows.  Perhaps then her son, the Director of the NSA is a sacred sheep or goat.  Because when it was necessary to investigate charges of fraud in his agency, the investigation was promptly sent to a private party outside of the Ministry of Justice. 

Mr. Minster please consult with the Minister of Finance, and provide the Liberian people HOW MUCH money has been made available to the Ministry of Justice for investigators and prosecutors?  Please ask the Minister of Finance to provide to the Liberian people the budgetary allotment for LAWYERS, in other government agencies.  How does that compare with what is provided for the Ministry of Justice?

Will those figures reflect a commitment to investigating and fighting corruption?

For a government, which has completely lost the trust of its citizens, it should be evident that whoever speaks on behalf of the government, at this time, should be a person of substantial credibility.  The President seems to prefer the face of her government to be a man singled out, by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for economic crimes.(TRC Final Report, page 295), and one forbidden to enter the United States. 

Isn’t this the very Lewis Brown who accused the President of desecrating the office of the Presidency, only a few years ago?  

As for Deputy Minister of Information, Isaac Jackson, I will not dignify his comments, as it is evident he lacks the aptitude and the intellectual heft to understand the contents of Minister Tah’s statement.

This President seems to have a penchant for losing women of great credibility, Antoinette Sayeh, Olubanke King, and now Madam Tah.  At some point, you must look in the mirror, instead of looking in the echo chamber, comprised of the likes of Lewis Brown, and ask yourself: what am I doing wrong. 

Finally, with regards to corruption cases, we have seen the President’s attitude towards her cronies, like for example, resubmitting names to the Senate, in the face of brewing scandals.  It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude the Justice Ministry would have been pressured by the President to forego prosecution of her cronies.

We are all waiting to see the government’s performance on corruption going forward…we will be watching.

Clarification Letter Links:

1. 10/08/2014 Clarification Letter (Page 1)
2. 10/08/2014 Clarification Letter (Page 2)
3. 10/08/2014 Clarification Letter (Page 3)

The President of Liberia in a letter, to the House of Representatives, seeking to clarify her earlier request for Emergency Powers, demonstrates how contemptible she is of the people of Liberia.

In her earlier letter the President requested Emergency Powers to abrogate Article 24 of the Liberian Constitution. Her request read:

7. Article 24 of the Liberian Constitution (1986). Appropriation of Property
The President may, by proclamation, appropriate any private property or prevent the use thereof in order to protect the public health and safety during the state of emergency without payment of any kind or any further judicial process. Provided however, that the property will be released to the rightful owners upon the end of the state of emergency and that the government pays for any damages thereto. 

I argued that the President should not be able to seize private property and leave the citizens no ability to have the process reviewed by a court. Secondly the idea that the government alone would decide what the damage would be and what it would pay for is particularly specious.

On October 8, 2014, the President made the following clarification to the legislature:

Article 24 of the Liberian Constitution (1986) Expropriation of property. The President may, by proclamation, appropriate any private property of prevent the use thereof in order to protect the public health and safety during the state of emergency without payment of any kind or any further judicial process. Provided however, that the property will be released to the rightful owners upon the end of the state of emergency and that the Government pays for any damages thereto.

The death tolls brought about by this disease have been overwhelming particularly in counties like Lofa, Montserrado, Bong, Margibi, Nimba, Bomi and others. We are advised by both national and international health authorities that victims of the Ebola virus must be buried and laid to rest in isolated places and not in any ordinary public graveyard or cemetery. Such a number of deaths we have seen and experienced, present a problem as a public cemetery are very few and inadequate. Therefore the government of Liberia will use any available land in any town, village or city conducive for the burial of Ebola victims whenever the safety of the people or dwellers of such community demands. Such land to be used will be released or returned to the rightful owner upon the end of the state of emergency. The provision of Article 24 of the Constitution will therefore be affected or suspended whenever and wherever necessary.

So the President's original request was not only deliberately vague and deceptive. It was a lie. 

Her initial demand was to be able to appropriate ANY private property,  not any available private property. Any available private property includes occupied dwellings, cars, trucks, pencils, pens....ANY private property.  Now she explains she actually wants any available land.  Would it not be easier to have the Ministry of Lands Mines and Energy and CNDRA identify possible cemetery sites and purchase them from the owners?

Would it not be safer to build crematoriums in each county / location, as Min. Lewis Brown said they already had plans to do?  

Based on her clarification the President wanted to appropriate private property, turn it into a cemetery, and then return the cemetery to the rightful owner. What "DAMAGE" would the government pay for. Does this President not understand that turning any land into a cemetery make that land UNUSABLE to the owner for any purpose? This explanation is so odious, and dishonest, it is not even worthy of any consideration.

This was never about cemeteries.  It was a flat out attempt to be able to dispossess citizens of any property the president and her minions identified and wanted, and deny them any judicial redress.  There is no sane person, who believes turning vacant property into a cemetery and then returning it to the rightful owner, leaves the land usable for any other purpose.  Congratulations Flomo Zayzay, the government has just returned your 25 acres and it is now a cemetary...enjoy!

This lady continues to try to take Liberia down the road to perdition.

The recent decision by the Supreme Court to suspend Justice Minister Christiana Tah for granting compassionate leave to journalist/publisher Rodney Sieh has created shockwaves across the length and breadth of the political landscape. The entire Judiciary, the Executive, as well as the Liberia Bar Association have been reduced to caricatures of what properly functioning, independent structures of government and their attendant professional organizations should be.

Nowhere in Liberian law is it granted that the Ministry of Justice must first seek approval of the Court in its management of people committed to prison. The Supreme Court of Liberia itself can produce no such law. Not even lawyers who have argued in support of the Court have been able to provide such a reference. Let us also remember, the Justice Ministry was not required to seek Court approval to send Mr. Sieh to the hospital. The Supreme Court never argued that. They only argued that any compassionate leave of prisoners under civil commitment must be approved by the Court.

In sanctioning Minister Tah, the Supreme Court communicated in unambiguous terms that the Justice Minister and other respondents should simply come to the Court and apologize, and the whole matter would be over. Even a layperson understands that once you apologize, you surrender your right to mount any defense of the law. You prostrate yourself before the Court and beg for mercy. Thus, in keeping with the Court’s stipulation, the Justice Minister, the Ministry’s lawyers, including a former Solicitor General, all formally "apologized" to the Court. The Court then responded to the requested apology by suspending the Justice Minister’s license for six months, in effect preventing her from practicing law.

The treachery of the Court in demanding an apology, and then suspending the Justice Minister, also extended to suspending Mr. Sieh’s lawyer for three months – for his audacity in advocating for his client! In this environment of judicial misconduct, neither the Liberian Bar Association nor any one of Liberia’s supposedly towering legal "giants," which include some perennial presidential candidates, rose to defend the law.

It appears that the Court’s behind-the-scenes machinations were designed purposefully to prevent the Justice Minister from presenting a defense to the Court’s contempt citation, because any such defense would have laid bare the Court’s actions as nothing more than a vindictive power play. Whether this was in concert with the Executive remains an open question. However, the President’s silence on the abrogation of a privilege reserved exclusively for the Executive demonstrates tacit consent.

In its ruling, the Court claimed that the Justice Ministry had formulated no rules for granting of compassionate leave, therefore the Ministry of Justice arbitrarily sought to disobey Mr. Sieh’s commitment. When the Justice Minister tried to submit a Petition for Re-Argument, the Court rejected the petition, saying, "We only want another apology." As of today, the Court is still demanding yet another apology. But if the Minister’s initial apology resulted in a six month suspension, logic should tell anyone that another apology may well result in the Minister’s disbarment. Is this the type of behavior we want for our country’s highest court?

Only the pathologically insecure can find pleasure in continuously humiliating those they exert power over in this manner. Such judicial sadism is unacceptable in a democratic country.

What is abundantly clear by law, as highlighted below, is that the custodial supervision of all prisoners is the exclusive domain of the Bureau of Corrections and the Ministry of Justice.

Under Liberia’s criminal law code

§ 34.20. Leaves from prison.
1. Compassionate leave. The Minister of Justice shall formulate rules or regulations governing compassionate leave from institutions and, in accordance with such rules and regulations, may permit any prisoner to leave his institution for short periods of time, either by himself or in the custody of an officer, to visit a close relative who is seriously ill, to attend the funeral of a close relative, to return to his home during what appears to be his own last illness, or to return to his home for other compelling reasons which strongly appeal to compassion. The rules or regulations shall provide for the manner in which compassionate leave shall be granted, for its duration, and for the custody, transportation, and care of the prisoner during his leave. They shall also provide for the manner in which the expense connected with such leave shall be borne, and may allow the prisoner, or anyone in his behalf, to reimburse the State for such expense.

§ 34.2. Segregation of persons committed to correctional institutions.
In institutions or parts of institutions supervised by the Ministry of Justice, the following groups shall be segregated from each other:

(a) Female prisoners from male prisoners;
(b) Prisoners under the age of twenty-one from older prisoners;
(c) Persons detained for hearing or trial from prisoners under sentence of imprisonment;
(d) Persons detained for hearing or trial or under sentence, from material witnesses and other persons detained under civil commitment.

Additionally, section § 34.2.(d) of the criminal code clearly assigns the "segregation" of ALL prisoners under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice. It is difficult to believe that the unstated legislative intent of this law was for the Ministry of Justice to supervise all aspects of a prisoner’s custody, when he eats, when he sleeps, when he exercises, but only if he is a prisoner under civil commitment, must she receive court approval for compassionate leave.

There are two Supreme Court Justices who previously served as Minister of Justice: Justice Kabina Janneh, and Justice Phillip A. Z. Banks. As Minister of Justice, Justice Janneh granted compassionate leave to a pregnant woman prisoner who did not return to prison. Justice Phillip A. Z. Banks also served as Minister at a later date. Are these two Justices asking us to believe that the rules for compassionate leave used by then Minister Janneh were non-existent or voided after he left office, or that neither of them were aware of those rules? In either case, it makes their argument specious at best. Secondly, by demanding that the Ministry of Justice simply apologize, the Ministry was not allowed to present any evidence that such rules as above do exist.

Ministry of Justice Compassionate Leave Regulations Updated (January 2013)

Liberia does have quite a number of drinking establishments called bars, but the Liberian Bar Association is supposed to be the organization which deals with things like legal misconduct and the policing of lawyers.

It has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between the Liberian Bar Association and the Association of Liberian Bars, though the latter boasts far more vocal advocacy for its members.

When then Justice Minister Phillip A. Z. Banks violated every protection provided by law for the Nigerian Valentine Akiya, the Bar Association did not raise its voice to that misconduct. Mr. Akiya took his case to the ECOWAS Court, which found Liberia guilty in Valentine Ayika v Republic of Liberia: "Judges who presided over the trial informed the Government of Liberia's lawyers that the Liberian Government acted illegally by seizing the then Nigerian businessman money, and as such should pay back the money in the tune of US $508,200 to Mr. Ayika" (http://allafrica.com/stories/201210150746.html ).

The actions taken by Justice Minister Phillip A. Z. Banks have brought nothing but shame to Liberia and tarnished its image, especially amongst its fellow ECOWAS countries. Liberia is now refused a place on the ECOWAS Court until the Liberian judiciary complies with ECOWAS legal standards.

In other countries, when Mr. Banks was nominated for the Supreme Court, the Bar Association would have raised alarms and sought serious debate over his appointment given his violations of Mr. Ayika’s rights. When this same Justice Phillip A. Z. Banks refused to recuse himself from Mr. Sieh’s appeal, even though Mr. Toe’s lawyer is his brother-in-law, and he had previously worked at his brother-in-law’s law firm prior to becoming an Associate Justice, the Liberian Bar Association said nothing about the breach of ethics. Although the rules of disqualification may not be present for Liberia, Justice Banks studied law at Yale University in the US and should be familiar with 28 U.S. Code § 455 pertaining to the Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge. Chief Justice Lewis was many things, but even he had the honor and dignity to recuse himself in the matter regarding Mr. Sieh, after Mr. Sieh complained that he would be partial because Mr. Sieh had previously published articles about his drinking habits and alleged judicial misdeeds. Regarding Justice Banks, we should not be surprised that a Justice Minister who violated the rules of the ECOWAS Court refuses even the appearance of bias.

The silence of the Liberian Bar Association, and that of ALL lawyers in Liberia, is a glaring indication that the freedom of speech this President is so highly praised for in reality does not exist. If the lawyers of Liberia, who are charged with defending the free speech rights of the citizens, are themselves too afraid to give candid professional opinions about Supreme Court rulings, can we seriously say that free speech exists in Liberia? Was this not the crux of Mr. Sieh’s complaint against the judicial system?

President Sirleaf should think long and hard about this: We are eight years into her presidency, and the Court she has appointed is carving a legacy worse than that of prior courts under the True Whig Party, and the Doe and Taylor regimes. The actions of the Court and the President’s silence, for whatever reasons, have exposed the entire Liberian judicial system, from the Supreme Court to the Bar Association, as incapable of functioning impartially. All of the people on the Court were chosen by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and thus their every action, and her inaction, reflects her legacy. 

This letter appeared in FrontPageAfrica on January 28, 2014

Dear Madam President:

It was refreshing for me to listen to your Justice Minister, Christiana Tah’s BBC magnanimous interview on January 24, 2014 – a day after the Liberian Supreme Court Denied her petition to reconsider the punishment they imposed on her for discharging her duties as the principal legal officer of the Republic of Liberia. Apparently, the court took umbrage at the Minister for exercising her statutory power to grant compassionate leave to a journalist who had been imprisoned for blowing the whistle against an allegedly corrupt Minister.

I will defer substantive comment about the absurdity of the court’s ruling as I suspect that it could attract a tome of seasoned critiques in due course. However, embracing this development as a learning opportunity to help deepen our democratic practice, I write to address your confounding inaction and implicit abdication of authority as the Chief Executive of the sovereign State.

I have opted to write this letter under the cloak of a pen name, not for the fear of retribution, rather to illustrate the frustration that comes with trying to pierce a veil of secrecy. Your studied silence in the face of public outcry about the Liberian Supreme Court’s incoherent ruling against your Minister of Justice, Christiana Tah, seems to confirm the consensus among discerning analysts regarding your complicity in orchestrating the witch-hunt.

As the Chief Executive of the State, it is not unreasonable for you to take responsibility for an action your Minister undertakes at your behest. Equivocating or sitting on the fence is not a viable option; insofar as it suggests your endorsement of the court’s judgment, it signals your vote of no confidence in a Minister whose integrity and credibility is underscored by the action in question. If indeed the Minister has lost her principal’s confidence, it is all the more telling that you have not relieved her of a crucial portfolio the effectiveness of which you surreptitiously undermine.

Beyond the realm of speculation, I took solace in the objective BBC interview as evidence that Minister Tah found the fortitude to carry on with her responsibilities to the extent possible under the circumstances. Her relentless commitment is reminiscent of your 2011 Harvard Commencement speech in which you resoundingly extolled the virtues of hope and resilience. In that speech, you also reflected on the costs of “self-confidence, sometimes called arrogance“. Recalling “times when the burden of standing tall by one’s convictions seemed only to result in failure,” you insisted that “through it all, my experience sends a strong message that failure is just as important as success.”

As the point of departure for my present observations, Madam President, I will borrow your acclamations of the dividends of peace, your tribute to “Liberian women who fought the final battle for peace,” and your proclamation of both pride and humility “as the first woman President of my country – democratically elected” which you noted has allowed you to lead “national transformation, a change needed to address an environment characterize by such awesome challenges as … dysfunctional institutions”.

What are the prospects for the rule of law which is a fundamental condition for the transformation you espouse where the highest court of the land can get away with arbitrarily suspending the license of the government’s chief legal officer under the pretext of a perceived slight?Listening to the questions that Minister Tah fielded in her BBC interview indicates that Liberians remain focused on how best she can facilitate their pursuit of justice.

While the Supreme Court’s suspension of the Minister’s license to practice is not a mere symbolic gesture, the obvious sense of obligation that impels her to persevere in going about her business in the best interest of the country is a testament of uncommon patriotism. This is especially given that you, the principal at whose behest she intervened to grant the contested compassionate leave has studiedly remained silent in the court of public opinion throughout her petty, yet humiliating, ordeal with the Supreme Court.

Madam President, what’s your story? Is it easier to blame your challenges on vested interests? What are these interests and who enabled their chieftains? Revisiting your Supreme Court appointees, what are their antecedents? Did you honestly expect that these entities would transcend their pasts sufficiently to evolve into objective custodians of justice or were the appointments a deliberate ploy to institutionalize a kangaroo court? If the Minister of Justice is denied Justice by your highest court, what hope is there for the ordinary Liberian?

Do you not appreciate the profound threat that the judiciary’s encroachment into executive powers constitute, not just to your administration, but to the rule of law which is bound to safeguard democratic consolidation in Liberia? My paramount concern is more about the collective good and less about how history will judge you for squandering a pristine opportunity to rebuild. But, I’d be remiss not to emphasize that there is yet time for you to course correct.

Madam President, we recall the length you went to endear yourself to the international community as a patriotic opposition leader committed to the essence of equity and fairness. I was one of millions ecstatic when you were elected Liberia’s President and when you received the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating women’s participation in peace-building (presumably on the assumption that women’s participation makes a qualitative difference).

However, I must confess that I have had growing cause to ponder to what avail. What happened to the ideals that you championed as an activist and in your quest for office? Will the real Ms. Sirleaf please make herself known? Will you sacrifice the best interest of the nation for personal aggrandizement? Or will you summon up the courage to redeem the remaining years in your tenure to steer Liberia back on a course that gives it a meaningful chance to endure as a viable democracy?

To refresh my memory of why you earned my support, I revisited some highlights of your profile in the public domain. In a CCTV Faces of Africa footage entitled “Ellen Sirleaf: Mother of Liberia,” you excoriated politicians to distinguished your own public service aspirations. As you put it,

What I wanted to do was be a leader – a leader motivates people, inspires them and gets them to do things and politician just talks. … It hasn’t all been easy; I have had my share of failures, but I am so glad that the success has exceeded the failures and that is why I am where I am today; I was able to rise above the failures and rise above the difficulties. I hope I could send that message to every other woman or every other person that it takes perseverance and commitment and dedication and hard-work and honesty – a combination of those values can get you there.

Ironically, that video report was posted on the web on October 22, 2013, exactly a week after the Supreme Court heard proceedings indicting your Minister of Justice for contempt. In conclusion, the narrator clarified that your leadership has not escaped controversy, noting for example that you came “under fire for promoting 3 of [your] 4 sons into high positions”. A cursory review of official dispatches and popular testimonials on Liberia reveal sordid details of pervasive corruption and abuse of power throughout your government.

The 2012 Human Rights Report on Liberia which corroborates that officials engage in corrupt practices with impunity, relates the most serious human rights abuses to a lack of justice which stems from judicial inefficiency and corruption, etc. In delivering the 166th Independence Day National Oration on July 26, 2013, your own ruling Party chair, Varney Sherman, lamented that nearly ten years after the civil war and after two cycles of democratic elections, Liberians who have come to terms with the harsh reality “that peace is not necessarily the absence of war,” ask themselves whether the Government is sufficiently accountable and responsive to their needs.

Sherman proceeds to warn that

“our country cannot be transformed when public service is evaluated by the Liberian people at large as the place where corruption exists, persists and is practiced as a matter of course and with impunity.”

Hopes that your successive tenure will usher in a healing era of restorative justice and grassroots empowerment are increasingly eviscerated by your administration’s reenactment of chilling strategies that bear strong parallels with some of the conditions that culminated in the inhumane war.

Many who celebrated your democratic election as an antidote for amputation, castration, and other decidedly villainous modes of containing opposition have been astounded by your disdain, discipline and punishment of dissent. Yet, we know that dissent is the lifeline of democracy. What is the future of democratic practice where a civil society stalwart like the press is either alienated or co-opted or where the Bar – the iconic bulwark of justice – is unconscionably intimidated?

Is the assumption that the so-called “politics of the belly” which has become the hallmark of your administration overrides the public good? It is bad enough to imagine that a global goodwill ambassador such as yourself would stoop as low as purposefully installing roguish personnel in cardinal positions of power and normalize incestuous appointments which empower the likes of your sons to rid rough shod against all and sundry as if the affairs of a democratic polity are a birth-right entitlement.

If you care to take the pulse of your constituency, you will be dismayed to reckon how palpable sentiments for your resignation have grown. Yet, we know from experiences exemplified by the Arab Springs that a vacuum of power or unplanned succession could be a cure worse than the disease. Go figure, Madam President.

Ms. Susan Peyton,
New York, New York

Hernando de Soto
Economist Hernando de Soto, author of "The Other Path" and "The Mystery of Capital," is the director of Peru's Institute for Liberty and Democracy and a champion of market economics and property rights.This Interview was conducted on PBS: Commanding Heights

Interview Contents

• Capitalism and the Road to Prosperity
  INTERVIEWER: Why does capitalism fail everywhere else and triumph in the West?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Because the West has a property rights system, and property rights systems seem to be about ownership. What we're discovering more and more is that it's really the system that undergirds the system of values called capitalism. In other words, you have property rights in the West. In developing nations we do, too, but they're not legal. Once you legalize them and you have recordkeeping systems and you have tracking systems and you've got contracts and you're able to get all the information about somebody's ownership over an asset, all of a sudden you obtain enormous amounts of data that you do not have in developing nations.
  
  In the West, that is captured in the property system. If you are somebody that is honorable and pays their debts, which is what somebody would be interested in, that's going to be captured in your records, and your records are linked to your property records. All of these are property rights, [but we don't have them] organized in a central system ... in Third World countries.
  
  INTERVIEWER: Is this a possible change in the Third World?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Yes, of course. ... You [The United States] were also a Third World country 150 years ago, and you transformed yourselves into a First World country. The same occurred for most countries throughout the world.
  
  INTERVIEWER: And how long will that take in the Third World?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: If we don't do anything explicit about it and we follow your formula, which is to zigzag our way to prosperity, it could take 300, 500 years. From the prosperous Catholic city of Florence until [the time when] all of Italy started having a right to prosperity, not sometimes but all the time, it took 500 years. What we say in The Mystery of Capital is that there are shortcuts, and once we learn what you did, what was necessary, especially the importance of property rights beyond ownership, we should be able to get there very quickly. The Japanese did it, for example, under MacArthur's occupation. They converted from a feudal system to a property-ownership system.
  
  
• The Influence of Developed Nations on Developing Countries
  
  INTERVIEWER: Why do you come here and go on American television? What are you hoping to achieve by this trip?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: A lot of the support we get for working in other Third World countries actually comes from the First World, from developed countries like the United States, so it's important to get our message out. It's important first for support [and] funding, and secondly to influence policy. So much foreign policy is mistaken as to where the challenges really are. We'd like to make sure that in developed countries, who have so much influence on what developing and former communist nations are, people realize what the real issues are about. So it's important to come here.
  
  INTERVIEWER: Does the developed world realize what the issues are?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: I think that the developed world is beginning to realize the issues. A lot of things that have gotten in the way have to do with culture. Culture exists; it's important. I go to Paris because I want to [experience a different] culture. When I go to Paris, I know I'm in another culture. But I don't think culture has really very much to do with the fact that some people are desperately poor and others are wealthy. One has to get that out of the way. It's important for people in the United States to realize that they, too, were a Third World country one time, and regardless of the culture, they became as developed as Spain was once. We have to do the same thing. We have to let them understand that it's invisible things such as the law and institutions which have enormous amounts of things to do with prosperity, and it's not easy to get that message across. You get a tractor, you get a big machine, and say these guys have got it and these other guys don't, and therefore these guys [with the tractor] are more prosperous than the second guys. That's easy to illustrate. When we talk about law, when you talk about institutions, it's very hazy stuff, so you have to go back and sink it in one time after another. It's a lifetime's work, I'd say.
  
  INTERVIEWER: The idea that the U.S. was once an underdeveloped country is hard to conceive when you sit here in New York. This looks like it's been here forever.
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: That's right. If you look at New York, there's a feeling that all of these buildings have been here forever, but in fact they haven't been here for that long. They certainly weren't here 100 years ago, not the ones you are photographing now. Enormous amounts of things can be done in half a generation. It's incredible. And when you go and see the United States, Williamsburg, which used to be a capital of the United States, and compare it with the way Mexico City was 120 years ago [or] what Lima was, we probably had bigger cities than you did in the Unites States, and all of this [growth] has been recent. A lot of it has to do with the right laws, with the right kind of institutions.
  
  INTERVIEWER: When you come to New York and see the kind of wealth that's here and the kind of consumption that's here, how does that make you feel compared to the kind of people that you and your people work with day to day?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: The difference between being in the U.S. and being in Peru is that a very small number of people in the U.S. are concerned with development for the very simple reason they're already developed, while development is what we're all about in the Third World. We've got a lot of the human touch; we've got a lot of the human dimensions. What we're missing is prosperity. So naturally when you go to Latin America and you talk about development, it's a big issue. Here in the United States it's an issue for the foreign-policy types. I think they call them foreign-policy wonks, some multinationals who have investment abroad, some internationally minded citizens, but they're not the majority of people. They're the minority, and that's what we deal with -- the minority, the ones who care.
  
  INTERVIEWER: How much does the policy in the developed world actually impact what you're trying to do in the developing world?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: What happens in the developed world impacts what happens in the Third World and in former communist nations very much. First, because people from developed nations have got more money, so people on the left in the United States who want to press certain points of view can actually turn governments around. So can people on the right. The war for development is fought on both fronts, both in the Third World and in the First World. In the First World, if somebody thinks that a human rights issue is very important regarding terrorism and they actually can manage to sink that point in and make it a big issue internationally, it's all about whether you're getting funds or not. You can decide the cause of that war here in the First World because the funding for the weapons, the funding for the balance of payments stabilization, the funding for economic adjustment, it all comes from the First World. So when the First World blinks, the rest of us blink as well, and even harder. So the war is also here.
  
  Let me give you an idea: Aid agencies which are extremely helpful are mainly concerned about physical things. How do we help the poorest of the poor? They give a lot of weight to them and relatively little weight to the changing of institutions or the changing of legal systems. That's a definite impact, because they pour money to those people taking care of the physical infrastructure stuff -- that's also where the best brains in the Third World go to. And they don't go to changing a legal system. So what happens in the First World is very important to us.
  
  INTERVIEWER: Do you feel like you're making progress?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Oh, yes. I think we are definitely making progress. The press is the first indication. We've been out in the last few months and in a lot of the major magazines in the United States and in Europe and in the UK. It's catching on because we're also making sure that the way our arguments are structured is not only understandable by the right people in developing countries but also can be read by the right people in the First World nations. It's very important to make the argument relevant to everybody.
  
  INTERVIEWER: Recently we were in Mexico and we interviewed Vicente Fox. He talked about your ideas and said, "We're listening to what de Soto is saying. We're also going to Egypt and trying to really connect with top leaders in developing countries...."
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: What we're trying to do is talk to very important leaders in the Third World -- not all of them, [as] there are about 160 nations between the Third World and former communist nations. What we're trying to do is to talk to some of those that are very relevant for a variety of reasons, but I would say that the principal one is so that the argument doesn't build up that what we're doing is a Latin American issue, or what we're doing has to do with former Spanish colonies. We think what we're doing has to do with human nature and the way societies get organized. So it's very important for us to be able to talk to the Cabinet in Egypt, which we do, because here we are talking with Muslims with a 6,000-year-old civilization, and the problems they've got are very similar to ours. It's important for us to be talking to Fox as well, because he's basically saying some of the things that the Egyptians have begun to say and the same things that Gloria Arroyo is saying in the Philippines. It's important for us to be in each different culture to indicate that the problems we're facing are standard and they are policy issues that can be dealt with.
  
  INTERVIEWER: In Mexico, they've got a lot of optimism, but they've got a huge challenge. What do you think?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Personally, I think that Vicente Fox and his people are doing excellent stuff. One has to keep one's eye on them very much because they're breaking an old monopoly tradition in politics, and so they've got a lot of difficult challenges to face. They're very credible now; the important thing is for them to continue being credible. They're also moving a lot of funds at the same time. They've got a very difficult task ahead of them, but we wish them well and we're going to support them as much as we can.
  
  
• The Roots of Poverty in the Devloping World
  
  INTERVIEWER: Let's talk a bit about your personal history. How did you get involved in these sorts of issues of capitalism, of poverty, and property rights?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: The way my involvement in these issues began was when I realized, after living in Europe for a long time yet traveling constantly back and forth to my native Peru in Latin America, that Latin America, and Peru of course, were very poor. I hadn't quite realized that as a child. I thought that my Peruvian friends, my cousins, my interlocutors when I came to Peru were just as sophisticated, as clever, as skilled as my European friends when I was a child. It only dawned on me about the age of 17 that I actually came from a poor country. And then I wondered why, since the skills seemed to be the same, at least among elites. So I told myself there must be something that isn't obvious that accounts for the relative wealth of the European, the North American, the West versus the nations of the Third World. Since then I've been interested in finding out what that difference is. And since I couldn't pick it up in the books, I thought it had to do rather in observation, with getting involved in the grassroots. That's how I got involved in this. And about the age of 39 I had made enough money so as to survive, hopefully, for the rest of my life. I started getting more involved in these issues.
  
  INTERVIEWER: You're talking about grassroots, and we're now going to the town of Cajamarca [in Peru]. What message are you taking to Cajamarca?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: The reason we were invited to Cajamarca, like to all the other places we've been in Peru, is because of the book that I wrote, which has become Peru's number one best seller of all time. We've sold about 300,000 copies. It's called The Mystery of Capital, and it tries to give an explanation for poverty at a time when everybody is somewhat disappointed in the fact that since the fall of the Berlin Wall we've entered another model which supposedly was going to bring prosperity, the market economy capitalism, and it hasn't. I happen to believe in the market economy, and I believe that capital is the source, or explains to a great degree the capacity to great additional wealth of the West. I've come up with an explanation that says with the figures that we are bringing out that, in fact, the poor have worked a lot; that we're a very enterprising lot; that what is missing is a legal system and an institutional framework that allows us to leverage wealth.
  
  The reason I'm going to Cajamarca now is because the universities, the association of Citizens Against Terrorism, and a few other organizations have invited us to talk about The Mystery of Capital. The curiosity stems from the fact that now, 12 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 11 years after Peru adopted pro-market policies, their situation hasn't gotten that much better, and they want to know why. The Mystery of Capital offers an explanation. It says that the system per se works in the West, but that in our country, like in much of the Third World, it isn't functioning, not because it is not adaptable, but because we have missed some of the crucial elements that the Westerners had in the 18th and 19th century, like property rights, without with this system [the Third World] cannot function. I'm going there to explain to them that they shouldn't lose hope, that there are elements missing, but they require the active intervention of public opinion, and that's why I'm talking to them. And the need for politicians to overhaul the whole legal system so that they, too, can have property rights according to law over the assets they possess and be able to create capital.
  
  INTERVIEWER: Is Cajamarca like any other poor town in the rest of the world?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Cajamarca, yes, is a very typical Peruvian village, mainly of rural characteristics, probably the 20th in size of Peruvian urban conglomerations. So it's very small, and it's pretty representative of a lot of what we call Latin America -- that is to say, Latin America from Mexico down to Bolivia, that part of America where we are mostly a mixture between old Indian indigenous civilizations and the Europeans that migrated.
  
  
• The First World vs. the Third World
  
  INTERVIEWER: Why should the First World care about the Third World?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: I don't think the First World needs to care about the Third World. As a matter of fact, I generally believe that most of the problems that need to be resolved in the Third World and in former communist nations cannot be resolved from outside. In other words, I don't think there's much Westerners can do about it. Therefore, the fact that most First Worlders don't care about Third Worlders doesn't actually depress me, because I think the solutions are a local affair.
  
  Why would it be interesting for the First World to pay attention? Because we're a globalized economy. You depend very much on foreign oil. If you start working down to the crucial ingredient of your economy, you'll see that it's all interwoven. So in spite of the fact that you're not indispensable for the development of the Third World, the fact is that it is useful for us Third Worlders to be in close contact with you, and [to] be able to use mainly your technical advice when needed. But there is no reason that I can think of why I should try to convince a First Worlder to be interested in the Third World, other from the fact that we're all part of the same family.
  
  INTERVIEWER: You fly to a lot places. Where do you like to go? What sort of towns do you get more insight from?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: I have found out as we've been called to work in different parts of the world that every place brings something new. I was very interested, for example, when we were contracted to start helping redesign Egyptian legislation regarding property rights for the poor. I always thought that traveling to a different culture would make a great difference. It makes a difference, but not a great difference, and that's also interesting. What's interesting is to find out that we Third Worlders have much more in common than we have in differences. The cultural differences that would make for an interesting program on the Discovery Channel or an article in National Geographic Magazine are cute, are interesting, but that's not where the basics are. The basics are that all of us Third Worlders have in common a very underdeveloped property rights system, a very underdeveloped legal apparatus, and that's what keeps you ahead of us. That's the part I look at. The fact that I'm able to find it in different cultures is first of all important to us because it indicates that there are basic principles that account for development, that there are general theories that one can bring together and that, therefore, there are solutions that one can devise on the basis of this information. But it's not the differences that make it interesting for me to go into any particular part of the Third World; it's the fact that we're so similar in spite of the fact that this might be manifested in different cultural forms.
  
  
• Assessing the Success of Capitalism
  
  INTERVIEWER: You make a pretty amazing and sweeping statement: The moment of capitalism's greatest triumph is the moment of its greatest crisis. Why?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: The reason why this is not capitalism's best moment. I wrote the book two years ago, before it actually got published and started being circulated in Spanish, because it hasn't really worked for the majority of the people in former communist nations and developing countries. We people from the Third World and from former communist nations are five-sixths of the world's population. There are about six billion human beings in total, and five billion are in developing and former communist nations. At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we all decided to take the capitalist route. Right now it's quite obvious that about 80 percent of the people in developing and former communist nations have not benefited from the system. The fact that there's no alternative around for the moment doesn't mean that one cannot be created. It's obvious that people are trying to find other ways.
  
  So the test is there. The test is, can the system actually work for the majority of the people? So this is capitalism's testing moment. This has happened before. It's not that this hasn't occurred before. In Latin America, we found that in at least five opportunities, all our countries put together since the 1820s, when we found our freedom from Spain, [have] actually tried to follow the U.S. model or the Western model. We've privatized railways and we have lowered our tariffs to zero and we've opened ourselves up to foreign investment, and five times we've had to go back because it made sense for a very small [group] among of people at the top of the pyramid, but for the majority it didn't work.
  
  So our thesis is, basically, the reason it doesn't work for the majority is because the system can only work with property rights. Markets and capitalism are about trading property rights. It's about building capital or loans on property rights. What we've forgotten, because we've never examined the poor, we've sort of thought that the poor were a cultural problem, is that the poor don't have property rights. They have things, but not the rights.
  
  And when you don't have the rights, you don't have a piece of paper with which to go to market. You don't have a legal system that undergirds that piece of paper and allows it to circulate in the market. The question now is whether we're going to follow the Western route -- let's say that capitalism started 500 years ago -- and go through one revolution after another, tremendous wars, social wars and then finally, four centuries, five centuries later the system comes together, or we're going to be able to learn from you and get it over with in the next five, 10 years.
  
  But that requires for capitalism to understand that looking at the poor is not the task of the First Lady of the republic. It's the task of the president. It's not a question of just doing macroeconomic stability, getting your accounts right, stabilizing money. It's about finding out why the poor can't use the legal system and revamping it. It's major surgery. That's why we're at a time where capitalism is going to be tested. Will it be able to cater to the poor, or will it continually be seen in places like Latin America as something that essentially relates to libertarian clubs and to people who are wealthy, in many cases who don't necessarily believe in capitalism. They just believe in helping their own wealth. Or are we going to make it inclusive and start breaking the monopoly of the left on the poor and showing that the system can be geared to them as well?
  
  INTERVIEWER: You have alluded to it a bit, but I want to know if capitalism is really in trouble.
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Capitalism of course is in trouble, because as usual it is only catching on among the top 20, 10 percent of the population of Latin American countries that have got their property rights paperized in a way that they can enter the market. It's in trouble in the sense that it isn't working for the majority. I insist that capitalism doesn't work without property rights, so it only works among the Westernized elites of our country. You may have noticed that in all developing countries and even former communist nations there are always some people who have been to Harvard, that have taught at Yale, that are in touch. Elites all throughout these hundreds of years have always been in touch. Kings and queens from different countries have always been in touch. So the fact that the system works for an elite doesn't mean it's successful. We've always taken it as successful. We've always actually thought that the poor didn't [appear] for cultural reasons. We've always thought that the poor needed to be educated. That's why they didn't come in. And what The Mystery of Capital tries to tell you is that there are huge legal obstacles for the poor to come in. It isn't that they culturally don't want to come in. They're continually proving that they do want to come in because they're continually migrating to countries like the United States and Canada and western Europe, so they do want to come in. The problem in our countries, in Latin America, is we're not letting them in, and it's because we haven't gone around to finding out what is the cost of getting in it. We're starting to find out it's a very high cost.
  
  INTERVIEWER: The elites are to blame?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: I always thought, at least in the case of Latin America, that elites have not accomplished their role. At the end, to create a revolution where the legal system and the market benefits everybody is a heroic task. We realize this the more we look into history and see what the foreign elites did back at the time, for example, of the American independence. They had a vision. And they had the courage to rebel against a status quo. What happens in many Latin American countries and Third World countries is that the elites don't do this, and [they] try to explain the economic backwardness of a large amount of the population -- 80, 90 percent of the country -- as a cultural problem. "We need education," [they say,] instead of seeing it as essentially a problem of [invisible] obstacles that are put in their way ... and they're so set in their ways of thinking that the lower classes are inferior that they're actually acting a lot more like Russian elites in 1914, 1917, than American elites back at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, who were open-minded. Many times, of course, [impoverished] Latin Americans become confused by looking at them, because they're able to talk about Hayek and they're able to talk about Milton Friedman. But it's not that they really believe in them; it's sort of like a shield. It's a shield they use. They use libertarianism and conservative ideas the same way communists used to use socialism to hide their real intentions. You have to always be careful about that, because undertaking a revolution in terms of liberty is a very revolutionary task. It requires lots of guts, and it requires going against a status quo. Nobody who really gets along with the status quo can be absolutely trusted to change these countries around from their backwardness to a prosperous society.
  
  INTERVIEWER: We've been told for 50 years now that free markets bring freedom. Do you believe that?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: I believe that markets do help absolutely to bring freedom. I don't think that's enough, but I certainly do think that helps, because at the end good markets work with information. You need information, and that necessarily brings pressures on the political system to make people accountable, to provide the right kind of information, to provide the right kind of enforcement. They feed on each other. But it is also important to emphasize democracy as such. I am not necessarily a great friend of some Asian systems which went towards free markets but disregarded the democratic side. That may have worked in certain cultural circumstances and may not work in others. In the case of Latin America, where there is such a cult to the idea of democracy, you also have to add an effort in terms of political freedoms as well as economic freedoms.
  
  INTERVIEWER: There has been a battle of ideas that that the world has undertaken between communism and capitalism. What's next? Where are we swinging?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Capitalism definitely won the battle against communism, but a lot of the main ideas or concerns behind the early communists and socialists are still around. They had to do with an equality. They had to do with inclusiveness. They had to do with fairness. These ideas will get back into the game, and I think it depends very much on the elite in developing countries to make sure that these are also incorporated into the capitalist or free-market argumentation. It's not enough to say that these are the leftist kind of things, human rights kind of things. We've got to bring them in. If we don't bring them in, the traditional leftist will come back. The traditional Latin American leftist is very different from the American liberal who respects democracy. I'm thinking about Latin American leftists who have no problem of carrying out reforms with no democracy whatsoever. If we don't incorporate all of these humanitarian values, all these humanistic values, all of these democratic principles within the capitalist agenda, it'll be born again in some other form that may not be the traditional communist one but will bring with it the same, and many, dangers that communism came with, which is a total disregard for the basic principles of economics that produce wealth and that at the end up solving material problems.
  
  INTERVIEWER: It seems that globalization is the trend. Won't that make it worse for poor people?
  
  HERNANDO DE SOTO: No, globalization is where we've been heading for ages. Look at me with the beard and no hair on my head. I'm a product of globalization. Latin American Indians, Peruvian Indians aren't bald, and they can't grow hair on their face. I am a product of globalization. I am the result of Spanish migrants having come to Latin America and probably mixed with some Indians, but not enough so as I can't grow my beard. So globalization has been going on. What we're finding out now is what the early economists, the classical economists told us, from Adam Smith to Marx, which is that the more we learn to divide work among ourselves, the more productive we get. The idea was not only to go for larger markets in larger cities, but go for larger national markets and now larger international markets. And it's obvious that these are going to bring prosperity.
  
  What we've just got to make sure of is that globalization also includes the underclasses. They have a lot to gain from it as well. But if I go with you through the obstacles that somebody that's poor has to go through to get an export license, or an import license, or be able to put together the kind of paper that'll allow you to globalize, you'll find out that it's a pretty exclusive club, those who can globalize. It's a club made of those people and places like where I come from, Lima, that know how to deal with the law firms, that know how to lobby for legislation that helps some, but doesn't help somebody else. In other words, a system of capitalism for only a few, because there's a legal apartheid that blocks the majority from coming in. Everybody wants to globalize.
  
  And if somebody tells me no, the poor of Peru don't want to be globalized, the logical question that comes is then why have a million of them traveled to the United States over the last 12 years, not to mention those who have migrated to Mexico or migrated to Spain or other parts in Europe? The reason is because they want to globalize.
  
  We are now in Cajamarca, and you have seen many people that still keep their old traditional Indian costumes and their ponchos and their big hats. Here we are really in rural bliss in Peru. But I'm sure that when you've been to Lima -- not only Lima but most of the towns of Peru -- you don't see that anymore. People have got sneakers, and they have trainers, and they've got Nikes and other things. They're already globalizing. There is no cultural resistance to getting in on the same wavelength. The problem is that they can't globalize in economic terms. They're not allowed to get into the international market except for touristic projects and for artisanry.
  
  

• Property Law and Capitalism

  INTERVIEWER: You are trying to do something unusual, which is to get a message out to the people. What exactly are you trying to achieve by holding these symposiums?

  HERNANDO DE SOTO: There's a message in my book which is the result of the research and the conclusions my colleagues and I came to as a result of very practical empirical experience in many developing countries throughout the world. The general idea is that there doesn't seem to be a better system in the world than the capitalist system, and it's a very subtle one, too. It's much more sophisticated than what people think. What it has is the ability to pick up the value of people's work. It has the ability to be put on paper, to accumulate, to represent value, and to use it to further additional production.

  What we think is that the reason it isn't working in the developing world and the reason it isn't working in former communist nations is not because people are anticapitalist or people are antientrepreneurial, but that the infrastructure of laws that make the carrying of capital possible are simply not in place.

  The message here is don't despair; it's worked for the West; it can work for us. We know nothing better. But it's going to involve radical changes, and you being entrepreneurs are going to be the first ones interested in making sure that these changes occur, and they have to do with the legal system. Here's what we have to say about how the existing legal system in the Third World conspires against you, how it doesn't allow you to come in. Be conscious that that's the source of the problems, that it's not the capitalist system, it's not the free markets system, it's not your capacity as an entrepreneur; it's essentially a legal system that doesn't allow you to accumulate capital, to organize value, and to be able to transfer it.

  INTERVIEWER: So the system is rigged against poor people?

  HERNANDO DE SOTO: What happens is that over the last 11, 12 years, the recipes available in the international market were at the macroeconomic level. Look, free-market entrepreneurialism is possible everywhere. It's a question of having stable money. It's a question of having fiscal equilibrium -- government doesn't spend more than what it gets. And it's a question of making sure that the government isn't the manager of enterprise, so you have to privatize things.

  That and a few other adjustments called "structural adjustment." But what we're seeing now is that that's important, but it certainly isn't enough. It isn't even the beginning of the story. Of course you need stable money, and of course to have stable money you need a government that doesn't overspend, and of course you also need a government that isn't involved in enterprise. But you also need, more important than other things, a rule of law that makes a market economy, the interdependence between millions of producers, possible through good contracts, through good administration of justice and through representations in paper that are capable of capturing value, so as to use that value to further additional production, i.e. capital.

  The general idea here is that we haven't properly yet understood the capitalist system. It's much more profound, it's much more subtle than we all expected, and it has only partly to do with macroeconomic equilibrium. Most of it has to do with the rule of law, putting in place a system that allows all of us to prosper.

  INTERVIEWER: And so far the system hasn't prospered. Why? Why doesn't it work?

  HERNANDO DE SOTO: The system hasn't prospered so far because we've dedicated ourselves only to doing the macroeconomic side of the formula: stable money, fiscal equilibrium, and privatization. The majority of the capitalist system the way I understand it is essentially a legal property system. And in most developing countries and former communist nations you do not have a legal property system that can provide a framework for the majority of entrepreneurs. I'm talking about 80 to 90 percent of all the entrepreneurs that exist. As a result of it, you cannot produce wealth.

  One of the things that always scares me is that secret little argument, not even intellectual argument, that little prejudice that is not only in the minds of Westerners, but is also in the minds of elites of developing countries and people that take decisions, that the reason the capitalist system doesn't work is because culturally we're not ready for it, whatever the word "culture" means. It may even have racist implications. What we're saying is well, maybe it's true. Maybe the capitalist system does work much better with Protestants and whites. Maybe. But before that, let's take away all these enormous legal obstacles that poor people have to face. Let's take away all the ignorance around law and let's put good law into place and then we'll just see whether it works or it doesn't. We're absolutely convinced it does work because people are actively [conducting] enterprise all over the world. The thing is, they can't make long-term contracts, and because they can't make contracts, they can't obtain credit, and they have no way of constituting a company that can issue shares, therefore they have nothing to sell against investment. That's the reason it doesn't work. I don't think it's cultural at all.

  INTERVIEWER: So education isn't going to solve anybody's problem?

  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Education is important. Education is important; health is important; religion, beliefs are important; a civil society is important; a good democratic system is important. But there are many developing countries where you do have some kind of a democratic system. There are many of these countries where you've got education. You could even say that in terms of the indigenous needs of the Peruvian nation we've over-invested in education. Why? Because most of the people that we've educated have emigrated to the United States.

  So I'm not saying that education is not important, but if you don't have a capital infrastructure that is capable of creating job opportunities and entrepreneurial opportunities as a first source, all that education doesn't help. What we're saying is we've tried education, and it's good that we continue. Health is also extremely impor

All Liberian anti-gay activists have decided to join forces under a single umbrella to help stamp out homosexuality in the small west African nation. The group (PEWMAH) Pedophiles, Embezzlers, Warlords, Molesters, Adulterers Against Homosexuals claims the mantle of covering about 90 percent of the Liberian Population.

According to the group spokesman, Bigboy Gorbachop, "we represent the national character and identity of Liberia and we therefore oppose the legalization of this type of satanic vice which can destroy our proud national heritage."

He further went on to say "we acknowledge we are all sinners; however, homosexuality, is against the very nature of our shared Liberian and African heritage." The group says there is no reason to hold national meetings or conventions as 9 out of every 10 Liberians are members of one or more of its sub groups. "Anywhere more than 3 people are seen, dah meeting!" said the spokesman. 

However, not all anti-homosexual groups are happy about the naming of this umbrella group. The Group Sex Association (GSA) of Liberia, the Closeted Legislative Caucus (CLC), as well as the Greater Monrovia Chapter of Fornicators Anonymous (FA), the Hidden Homosexuals of Liberia(HHL),and Parishioners for Promiscuity (PfP) have all put out statements protesting not being recognized by this umbrella group.

The Godma and Godpa Association of Liberia, currently holding their national convention in Bongquenemah,  could not be reached for comment.

The Closeted Legislative Causes, which is comprised of closeted members of the legislature stressed they are vehemently opposed to the legalization of gay marriage in Liberia. Their spokesman said, off the record, "if gay marriage is legalized in Liberia, some of our closeted partners will demand marriage proposals from us; we prefer to continue to act in a manner that is culturally acceptable for Liberia and Africa as a whole."

For its part, the Group Sex Association spokesman, Mr. Paigar Jukay, said even though his group is not named in the initials of the umbrella group, he is pleased that Liberians of all stripes are waking up to fight this terrible lifestyle. He continued that with the addition of these four groups they will achieve nearly 98% of the population of Liberia. He also reminded this reporter, that many Liberians are actually members of multiple groups named here.