18 October 2007
interview
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told AllAfrica in a 1986 interview, shortly after being arrested and fleeing the country, that her goal in life was to "bring good governance to Liberia before I die." Since her inauguration in January 2006, she has had the chance to try, and she acknowledges the magnitude of the challenge. Twenty months into her presidency, she thinks the campaign against corruption and the process of delivering health services, education and jobs has gained traction, and she is encouraged. But she says the region is troubled, peace is fragile and Liberia must have help to deliver a democracy dividend and preserve stability. Excerpts from an interview earlier this month in her Monrovia residence:
What is it in the last 20 months that brought you the most joy in this job?
Seeing the children smile again. As I went around during the campaign, the children looked so down-hearted and despondent. I said in my Inaugural speech that the greatest joy I would have is to make them smile again. I am so pleased today that whenever I get out of the vehicle and go to children- they all rush as soon as they hear the siren and know I am coming. The all are smiles, and they are all laughing, and they all call me 'Ellen'! So that's my greatest joy!
Would specific accomplishments most please you?
If we are talking qualitatively, it's the restoration of hope. People now see that there is indeed the light at the end of the tunnel. It is possible for us to move toward achieving our national potential. That to me is also one of the things I find very satisfying.
In terms of the quantitative things, we can go through the list: training of the new professional army and police; having sanctions lifted off our timber and our diamonds; restarting the forestry sector; qualifying for the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa); completing a one year Staff Monitoring program with the IMF and restoring our good relations with those institutions just about to the place where we will resolve our U.S.$4 billion external debt problem and get the relief that will put us on the course toward the heavily indebted poverty reduction program.
We've also been able to get some of our fast-growing sectors functioning again. In renegotiating the Arcelor Mittal steel agreement for a U.S.$1 billion investment in our mines, we were able to get back, into government ownership, assets like railroads and ports that had been given to them under the [previous] concession agreement. We also have been renegotiating with Firestone to make sure that there are more benefits to the country in that arrangement. When we got here, we insisted we are not going to let our people live under the conditions they did, and Firestone gave us a new five-year plan for new housing, new schools and clinics. Look at the Firestone plantation today; the plantation is transforming. We're getting other mines restarted and are negotiating to revive some of our oil-palm plantations and get new investors involved.
On the economic track, our revenues increased by over 44% - from U.S.$80 million, when we took over from the national transitional government, to today closer to U.S.$200 million, with the potential to double that in the next couple of years.
You've put special emphasis on fighting corruption. How successful has that been so far?
We've got a very aggressive anti-corruption strategy, although I'll be the first to say it is a big challenge. Corruption has so penetrated the fabric of this nation that it's hard for me to think that we will solve it right away. But we have made important first steps. We have taken to court high government officials who violated the public trust. We have done a code of conduct that is before our legislature. We've done an anti-corruption policy and strategy.
We have what we call our pillars of integrity. The General Auditing Commission is one. We have reactivated and strengthened that commission and that process is going to be achieved. The Ministry of Finance is another pillar, and judiciary is another. The judiciary still has a long way to go, but that process again has started.
What about improvements in living conditions here in Monrovia and around the country?
This capital city was dark for fourteen years. We have brought some electricity - not enough - but some street lights. Because it's not affordable for many families, we now have children doing home work under the street lights. A bit innovative, a small step, but we hope that we can expand that.
Water: there is water now coming into many of our communities either through the pump or pipe borne water into homes in places like Paynesville, Congo Town and lots of other places in Monrovia.
Our road reconstruction program - that's one that everybody places priority on. It's a bit delayed because our raining season stopped us from working. But some of the roads in the rural areas have been done. Now that the dry season has started, we have a very aggressive program to repair some of the Monrovia streets. And we have been able to mobilize some resources for that. So we just need to get the work done.
In education and health, we have enforced compulsory free and primary education, and that has increased enrollment by over 40%, most of them being girls, because we have a special emphasis on girls education. We're trying to repair and renovate so many schools all over the country. We've made sure that there's no fee in public schools, and we're subsidizing a lot of the private schools to make sure that people in communities can go to school. We are on a fast track with that one, and we're going to get additional help. We have just been included in the list of six countries that will benefit from the Bush administration's special educational initiative.
In health, we are tacking HIV/Aids and we have got support from the Clinton Foundation. After President Clinton's visit, he assigned someone to our Ministry of Health to help them at John F. Kennedy Hospital. We are trying to repair the clinics around the country. But we have a real challenge when it comes to health personnel. Getting medical services, particularly in our rural areas, is quite a long ways off. We have been getting support from Nigeria, which have sent us some volunteers doctors. We are getting help from the Chinese; they've got a medical team here. And we have been able to tap private sources.
Our Liberia Education Trust program, which mobilizes money from individuals and institutions in the U.S., has now raised about 3 million dollars to support what we call our "Fifty, Five Hundred, Five Thousand Program" - to build or repair fifty schools, train five hundred teachers and give five thousand scholarships to girls. Eighteen of those schools are now under construction. A hundred and something of the teachers are now being put through the teacher-training college. And we have about 1,270 scholarships that have now been given to girls in all of the counties, at different levels.
And we have our literacy program that falls under the Liberian Education Trust, in which market women have an opportunity to learn to read and write. It's exciting to hear them talk about how it has transformed their lives.
My promise to market women who supported me so well in the election was to improve their conditions. From private foundations, we raised about U.S.$2 million to improve or build new markets, here in the capital city and around the country. If you look around you will see so many of the markets are under renovation.
How do you, as president, decide on a daily or weekly basis what to pay attention to? How do you spend your time? How do you triage?
We have got an agenda. And there are so many policies that need to be addressed toward meeting that agenda. So I try to spent my time with each of the sectors to see where we are in formulating the policies. I spent a lot of time at the Finance Ministry looking at our revenue trends and our budgetary process. And a great amount of time with our legislature, trying to get our legislative agenda under way. A lot of it is structured and planned. Some of it is just responsive, reactive, because there's no other way.
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