Liberia: A Note To The Scoundrel On The Loose In Amara M. Konneh

Frantz Fanon warned us: ‘The future will have no pity for those men who, possessing the exceptional privilege of being able to speak words of truth to their oppressors, have taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, of mute indifference, and sometimes of cold complicity.”

Politics must be lubricated with the sense of national consciousness, patriotism and public spiritedness. A politics that takes these virtues into consideration and make them the thrust and centre of national life is one that prioritizes the promotion of the general in contrast to the self and thus creates the conditions for the ascent of the people to increase their capacity and master the law of nature and use technology to improve civilization. Conversely, a politics which is based on no conviction and raft of principles is one which promotes the self, relying on deception, trickery and intrigue to throw oneself on the stage of history, thus using the people as pitiful cannon fodder to achieve material splendour.

The tragedy of our country is the tragedy of the formation of political outfit on tribal irredentism and short-sighted outlook, where one’s loyalty and is to the tribe and he/she sees his social advances only when an element of his tribe is catapulted to national political leadership. This engenders a toxic fight in every election because one thinks that social mobility is not based on merit but a product of tribal patronage where kinsmen politics and other vicious manipulations substitute for merit, national consciousness and fair play within the polity. This political oddity brushes aside the question of the class struggle to the constricted plane of the tribe, thereby distorting the struggle for social emancipation and the ushering of a national struggle for social emancipation and the ushering of a national itinerary which focuses on national advances in all aspects of human development. Hence our national disaster!

Our quest for a transformed homeland is essentially our search for human dignity—that dignity to assert ourselves, that dignity to exploit the wealth provided by nature to ensure national transformation, that dignity to unwind the masses of the people from the clutches of mysticism and superstition to master the environment and use the tool of science so that they can live a decent life, that dignity where regardless of social status and name, opportunity will be affordable to everyone based on merit to demand better, to defiantly march with the national itinerary to build a great nation out of this space. Such dignity holds that in order for the society to make a quantum leap in the appropriate direction our people’s thought must be enriched by a sense of history so that they can participate in the affairs of politics to build an inclusive society, as throughout history it is the people—conscious and determined—behind a popular vanguard who can build a progressive society.

Besides, in a third country such as ours, a leader must not be a person who is affluent in material accumulation based on wholesale plunder of the national treasury. A leader must have spiritual affluence in contrast to material opulence, as the latter provides said individual with the crusading zeal to confront the problematic of stagnation and backwardness that are break on social progress. Such person must be someone who throws himself/herself against all odds, paying the ultimate sacrifice in order for the mass of the people to advance and ushering in a higher form of civilization where nature will not take a violent toll on them but would use it for social emancipation. Our understanding of leadership and people we celebrate must be based on an appreciation of their struggle and the vanguard role they play in uttering the wretched trajectory of society to engender a new society where the mass of the people will become masters of their destiny and faith to contribute to the flourishing of their environment.

Historical accident has foisted historical mirages and irresponsible nobodies on the centre stage of the national politics in the homeland. These elements, not possessing national consciousness, have stagnated the people in a very nasty orgy. This brings me to the rotten vestige of a dying order in Amara M. Konneh, who is a lousy yellow belly, a well-known tribalist, and serial rogue who is an embodiment of all of the aberrations of national leadership and honest statesmanship. This wretched panders to the politics of religious fundamentalism and tribal irrendentalism. He toys with the fantasy of using the narrow formations of his tribe and religious heritage to project himself at the pinnacle of national political leadership. This man, Amara M. Konneh, a noisy gate-crasher who wants to exploit these fractures due to the low level of political awareness of our people is not a national leader but a national scoundrel, and not a patriot but a national traitor, and not a nationalist but a crude ethnicist.

Those proclivities make the megalomaniac, in addition to his use of treachery, skulduggery and intrigue to hoodwink others. They make him incapable of contributing to the task of national renewal and nation-building efforts geared at delivering material emancipation to the mass of the population weighed down by the smorgasbord of social alienating, grinding poverty and economic deprivation. He is no visionary but a robber bureaucrat who is lust after power, prestige and money and thus possesses an ambitions which far exceeds his capabilities. That in order to achieve such ends he distributes pittance from the loot he amassed in order to buy loyalty and make people to toe his line.

Amara M. Konneh is an acolyte of status quo politics who sees the homeland as a plantation from America transplanted on African soil, exploiting the subaltern classes and the urban masses as the nation remains a raw material producing vassal for countries of the capitalist metropoles. His understanding of governance is essentially the mortgaging of our natural resources to the multinationals and transnationals in return for pittance in rent, taxes and royalties that are not sufficient to invest in social programs in health, education and infrastructure and to improve the income levels, nutritional content and thus lead the complex effort of the reorganization of society so that the wealth can benefit all.

People like Amara Konneh are the break on national progress and transformation. He comes from a cabal which has no progressive idea to drag the republic out of its current backwardness but strives on dominance, imbalances and brutal exploitation of the people and their national endowment, so as wealth becomes asymmetrical—a disproportionate portion goes to the cabal while a morsel is given to the mass of the people who toil for survival and see no rest except in the grave. He is a member of the cartel which retards and substitutes national development for national plunder and self-enrichment. That cabal with all of its greedy proclivities has no progressive fraternal developmental narrative for the mass of the exploited and oppressed people of our fatherland.

This get-rich-quick conman is incapable of espousing great ideas and a proper perspective for the progressive emancipation of the people other than vomiting those staid concepts and guesswork from the textbooks of the IMF and World Bank which have been the main menace decimating and ravaging the African people. These two organizations that are products of the Washington Consensus with its neoliberal agenda for third world countries are the bulwark for the protection of private property. They create the framework for the development of a parasitic bourgeoisie in third world countries which is incapable of developing the productive forces like its counterparts in the capitalist centre but thus amass ill-gotten wealth and deposit in its many bank accounts abroad and ally with foreign capital for the exploitation of the resources of third world countries.

These elements expect revolutionaries to tremble at the mention of the names of the troika of economic dominance of imperialism—World Bank, IMF and WTO. They must be psychopathic to think that we would be impressed that Amara Konneh is a cog in the machinery of that imperialist organization established principally to protest the imperialist interests of the triad: United States of America, Western Europe and Japan. Must we tell these people that in 1971 the Nixon administration signed a pact with the Wahhabi dictatorship of Saudi Arabia for the latter to sell its oil product in dollars in exchange for the US to provide weapons to save the decayed House of Saud, thus abandoning the international gold standard and introducing the petrodollar and thus making the dollars as the currency for international trade. It thus changed the dollar from a worthless paper to an international reserve currency.

Must we tell them the complicity of the IMF, World Bank and WTO in the war launched against Col. Mummar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein simply because the duo opted to leave that petrodollar pact and were toying with the idea of creating a new currency for the sale of their crude products? And currently, should we tell them the complicity of those triads in helping the US to sabotage and destabilize the economy of Venezuela simply because the people of the land of Simon Bolivar have refused to be subjected to the whims and caprices of imperialism and the diktats of its troika of economic dominance? Have they asked why the heads of the IMF and World Bank are either Europeans or Americans?

I don’t want to recount the famine, deaths and other fatalities caused by the structural adjustment policy of those institutions in Africa in the 1980s. I am not bother in the least at these institutions that are established to further the interest of the triad. As a man of conscience I educate our people against the disastrous policies of these institutions. Suffice it to mean whether Amara Konneh works there all not or even becomes head of anything there doesn’t erase the fact that he is a common thief who must be condemned to prison.

HB an embodiment of virtues, Amara an embodiment of awful vices

Since the arch-crook Amara harboured the ambition of becoming a leader of the republic at a certain time in his sordid life, the sponger started cleaning up himself in ways to not detect fraud and expose him as an economic imbecile whose claim to fame is avarice, plunder and theft. As he resigned his position, the poster boy and his political godmother and mother-in-law initiated a farcical audit to vindicate him. They then found a plaint stooge in Boima Kamara to hire a fly-by-night auditing firm to do their bidding. And the ridiculous audit was conducted, thus vindicating Amara of all charges in anticipation of any inquiry in the near future. The fact that the audit was done hastily says much about the mind-set of the people and the reason behind such rush.

For a man who stole funds meant to address structural imbalances in our healthcare sector and reduce maternal fatalities, for a social pimp whose hands were caught in the cookie jar by the Warner Committee, for a yokel whose record of public service is overwhelmed with scandal, for a guy who climbed through the ranks and file of the government by gossiping and bring others down, hiring a low key auditing firm to give him a clean slate is a child’s play. This is why for Amara Konneh insofar as the miserable exploitation of the people can land loot in his bank account and give him fame, the people can be used as experimental Guinea pigs, as he did in the last election by orchestrating a he and others devised a scheme to impose George M. Weah on us through a bogus electoral process.

But we have news for this chap who thinks he has the clairvoyance to outsmart everyone: Whether hundred years or thereabout, Amara Konneh, like President Bio has done in Sierra Leone, you will be dragged before a judicial commission of inquiry to account for your stewardship in government. Even before that, that discredited audit done by that bogus auditing firm will be discarded and rubbished to the trashcan. KPMG Auditing Firm will be invited to conduct an audit of you for becoming an overnight millionaire. You can comfort yourself and think you are so smart to not be busted, but your day of reckoning is soon in spite of the charade. The presidential position you are chasing which far exceeds your abilities will be your undoing. History will have its last laugh on you!

In addendum, we are aware about the supermarket chain in Philadelphia which belongs to the national thief in Amara Konneh, as well as his loot in Conakry, Guinea. They will be confiscated and used for the benefit of all. And by that time, the rascal will be serving his prison term in an orange jumpsuit. This fate seems too far to befall him for the cynics who cannot see beyond their noises, but soon this will be the lot of the mocking little imp in Amara Konneh!

Unlike Amara Konneh’s role in government which is stained and pockmarked with avarice, theft and loot, at a tender age HB found a path and direction in life: standing with the people and struggling against backward tendencies at the forefront of noble causes that tend to liberate society from bondage and push it in the epoch of social justice and plenty. This calling has been the basis of his involvement in the politics of the republic, to which he comes with virtues that distinguish him from others and thus put him in a unique league of immortals.

His service as Minister of Education lead to a transformation in the sector in a very short stint. Just to name few tours de force of his at the ministry of education: free education, adult literacy program, abolishment of activities fess, the purchasing of books at an affordable and adjusted prices, and other deliverables too numerous to name. Similarly, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he ensured that the PRC regime was accepted by global bodies such as the UN, ECOWAS, OAU and now AU, etc. He used his shrewd diplomatic manoeuvre and efforts to ensure Liberia reclaim her glory within the realm of international relations. The Liberian mission received their funds to operate in time. Seasoned diplomats and economic attachés and other specialized individuals were assigned at those missions to seek opportunities for the country in keeping with its national interest.

The era of the development of underdevelopment will be over soon as our task and advocacy are geared at constructing a new society, where machine, an instrument of human labor will not be used as an instrument of exploitation, but to produce surplus and abundance for the common good of all and thus create leisure that the people can participate in other aspects of the development of science, technology, culture, philosophy, etc. Such will end exploitation and put the country on a resilient path.