18 November 2008
Labor Minister Samuel Kofi Woods has called for the dismantling of the Liberian state.
Attorney Woods, a human rights lawyer and former student activist told commissioners of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that what was now in place is a "caricature of a state and not a real state."
Mr. Woods demanded that the Liberian state must be dismantled and re-conceptualized, saying that the real Liberian state must emerged out of the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia.
"We can do this by reverting to those values which dominate. This state has failed to offer something of value to its subjects in return for their loyalty," Mr. Woods said when he testified Tuesday at the ongoing public hearings of the TRC at Monrovia's historic Centennial Memorial Pavilion.
He said Liberia will fail no matter who becomes leader if the fundamental of collective ownership is not put in place. All reforms, he said, will be window dressing, because according to him the country already has a faulty foundation that is cracking that cannot erect a serious state.
"We have a state characterized by discrimination, subjugation and coercion. Distributive justice became a prevalent issue with the introduction of a so-called modern system of governance, history of injustice which includes resource distribution, land, lack of access and mechanisms of redress of grievances and justice for the rich and elites."
Mr. Woods said that Liberia has a background like many other developing nations of a false start as a nation, a weak and in cohesive state, lack of legal certainty, lack of respect for the rule of law, the crisis of legitimacy, the crisis of identity, participation, authority and penetration.
He said the country has always been a two tier state which is characteristics of colonialism.
Woods said that the country's internal conflict was only characterized by loot, plunder, brute force and naked power and did not border on ideological descent or religious tolerance but was about innate greed and criminal gangs who have discovered the weakness and fragility of the nation state.
"They have determined that it was possible with the acquiescence of a gullible international community it was possible to legitimize crime and to use the system of governance to legitimize crimes."
Under the theme: "Understanding the Conflict Through its Principal Events and Actors," the ongoing hearings are addressing the root causes of the conflict, including its military and political dimensions.
The hearings are focused on events between 1979 and 2003 and the national and external actors that helped to shape those events.
The TRC was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by the TRC Act of 2005. The TRC was established to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation," and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.
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I stronly agree with Kofi on the issue. Liberia has failed to offer something of value to its subjects in return for their loyalty regarless of which political party in power. The leadership in Liberia in the past and now are all greedy and selfish. I call them recircle politicians or political postitutes.
However, in my opinion, the key should be re-conceptualized as Kofi rightly stated. There should be efforts to conceptualize the history and structure of Liberia but I don't know if dismantling the state could be the right way to start the process. What I do… [Read Full Text]
Chairman Mao once said,"every revolution consumes its makers". Truly this statement has come to fruition in Liberia. They are now ready to destroy themselves,( the so- called progressive forces of Liberia),after destroying every good thing there was and killing thousands of their fellow citizens through utopia politicing, and having acended to power without any means to govern properly, one of their diciples, Kofi Woods, the minister of Labour, who had failed to properly govern a small institution, has now come with a new theory to dismantle the nation, Liberia.What a shame and disgrace to the Ellen and her cronies… [Read Full Text]
It is quite a disgraced that one of President Sirleaf's cabinet members is calling the state of Liberia a failed state. He also called for the dismantling of the Liberian Senate. While many Liberians will not agree with his characterization of Liberia present status, he thus striked an important point that need to be considered. The present Liberian House of Parliament is a disgrace to any modern democratic state. Law makers who are at odds with one other for greed of power, corruption, gossips, etc can call themselves representatives of the people of Liberia. The legislative… [Read Full Text]
Here! Here!
Liberia is a state, failed or nay; a soupist state that has failed to constitute its captured sub-altern population into a NATION.
Regards.
Mr.Woods is correct to say Liberia is a caricature State.IT has never been a genuine nation-state.The reason is that it did not enter into a legitimate social contract with the people it claimed to govern.In order to govern, a state must enter into a social contract with the governed and obtain their consent explicitly for government. It must also keep its side of the contract by meeting the security needs of the governed in exchange of their loyalty, according to John Locke's Social Contract theory.When the freed American slaves came to this part of West Africa,they lived in the Hobbesian… [Read Full Text]
SLAM DUNK: Under my theory of soupism, Liberia is not a nation, and never has been. Au contraire, it is a territory that is occupied by soupist fake 'political parties,' soupist parties determined by one and only one policy; loot the treasury, and shop and invest in the West, and other silly phenomena!
The same holds for all West African occupied territories. Soupist to the core and beyond, these territories are really for grabs, the silly, imported and flimsy bourgeois rhetoric of "rights" notwithstanding.
Cheers from zone anti-soupist.
Once again, it took Mr. Woods to say, in simple terms, what no one has been able to say. I would take his statement farther to include the entire continent of Africa. Alcoholics do it, so do drug addicts, pedophiles and any other petty criminals and obsessive gamblers willing to start anew: the road to self renewal is to first honestly recognize one's current position and those decisions, along the way, that got one in that position. Even those of us who have dabble in and out church know, that the road to Salvation is the confession of… [Read Full Text]