26 November 2009
Justice Clogged in Politics of Untouchability? Untested Guilt Verus Assumed Vindication
When President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf mid-October ordered one of her principal aides and confidants, suspended Information Minister Laurence Bropleh, to cut short his official visit to the People's Republic of China to answer to inquiries bordering reported fiscal fraud at the Ministry of Information, many might have seen the president's swift action an intent to expeditiously dispense justice consistent with her declared war against corruption.
It is nearly a month yet the man who was regarded government's mouthpiece and moral voice still carries a burden of both innocence and guilt with spillover effect on the Sirleaf administration.
The Analyst leafs through the conundrum which has befallen Minister Bropleh and how the lingering saga is impugning on the general fight against corruption in the public service. The nation was stunned in October when news burst that the government's chief spokesman and self-assigned propagator of moral transformation was reported to have been webbed in the throes of corruption.
It all came about when the nation's supreme audit institution (SAI) conducting its routine audit reportedly bumped into sensitive financial documents at the Ministry of Finance indicating that Bropleh's leadership at the Ministry of Information processed payments to a number of persons whose employment statuses with both the Ministry and government were questionable.
When the alleged shady dispensation of more than $300,000 to some individuals was unearthed, President Sirleaf immediately suspended MICAT's Comptroller, Joseph Nyamunue, and Chief Accountant, Josiah Gwagee, and ordered Minister Bropleh returned from the People's Republic China.
The top Information Ministry officials reportedly processed the payment of salary checks and other emoluments to a number of Liberian journalists under the arrangement that they were employed with Liberian foreign missions. In fact it was reported that Bropleh and his deputies paid up to $42,000 to Sabato Wiah, long deceased before the scandal, as Liberian Embassy press attaché with assignment in Nigeria. The period of payment covered October 2007 to December 2008, when Wiah was already a dead man.
President's Intervention
As the media scavenged over reports of Bropleh's alleged complicity in the siphoning of over US$300,000, the President who reportedly had got the case on her docket from the Ministry of Finance moved swiftly to calm public anxiety with suspension sentences against top officials of the Ministry of Information.
Heightened public anxiety which greeted the alleged MICAT scandal not only came from the backdrop of an earlier scandal, the Kendaja scam, in which an assistent minister was dismissed while Bropleh who was highly suspected to play a central role was kept off the hooks, but also because the government chief spokesman is--or was--a self-proclaimed champion of social transformation in the country.
President Sirleaf immediately ordered Bropleh's return from China where he had gone to attend a ministerial workshop on radio and television for developing countries. Sources said Bropleh's explanation to President Sirleaf on the scandal was punctuated with his suspension by the President until a full probe was concluded. In addition to law enforcement apparatuses authorized to probe, the President also instructed the General Auditing Commission (GAC) to execute a forensic audit. Other sources reported that the President has since been personally thwarting moves by Bropleh to attend cabinet meetings and other state functions while he serves his suspension.
Delayed Probe Reports & Rumor Mills
Instant presidential actions which greeted the Information Ministry fraud saga have been petering out with time, as both the Ministry of Justice and the GAC lingers in releasing official accounts of their various investigations. The delay of official accounts from investigation of the scandal has meanwhile fueled rumor mills, with some suggesting that the Minister of Information is vindicated while others say evidence against him is too strong to survive culpability and possible punitive sentence from the President if not from the law.
Unofficial accounts say a joint investigation conducted by the police, National Bureau of Investigation and a team of investigators at the Ministry of Justice finds the Minister and his deputies squarely culpable, but political considerations are being engineered so that the final report will not clash with public perspectives on the matter.
Others say President Sirleaf is caught between the scissors, torn between taking punitive action to erase, once and for all, stigmas haunting her government regarding the tendency of pampering deviant government officials, and bowing to advice which suggest that axing Bropleh, a full-blooded inner cycle of the administration, would be a lucrative and effective capital for opposition to exploit.
Though the President insists she is yet to take delivery of investigative report which the Liberia National Police reported has delivered to her office, there are reports that the President is also embattled by secret pressures from various groups, including Bropleh's religious relations, to exercise pardon. The Ministry of Justice, according to another report, is hesitant to release findings to the public because of possible public backlash it might face, particularly when it vindicates Bropleh and indicts other senior officials also allegedly involved in the scandal as the report appears to stand.
According to sources, the Ministry is finding shield in another outstanding report that is supposed to come from the General Auditing Commission. The GAC is reportedly being pressurized to first come out with its report. Without the GAC's opinion on the fiscal deportment of the indicted MICAT officials, some pundits believe, the possibility of Justice Ministry's or Executive Mansion's political position on the saga being hugely contradicted by GAC's scientific evidential report is highly.
The Ministry of Justice reportedly fears the contradiction, according to sources, which is why it is delaying its report until the GAC first comes out with its version. But the GAC is at the same time holding its final reports because, according to insiders, it does not work at the dictates of the Ministry of Justice or the office of the President. The GAC is an independent and professional entity which does not move to satisfy political instincts, said a source who doesn't want to be named in print because he was not authorized to discuss GAC work in the press. The source added the GAC is taking its own time to ensure that its report is fair and comprehensive.
Litany of Inherent Contrasts
The delays characterizing the MICAT scandal, according to some analysts, not only keep officials of the Ministry, particularly Bropleh, burdened with the question of unsettled quilt or assumed vindication, but have also flagged a number of contradictions as far as high profile cases involving top officials of government are concerned. If the President's initial swift action in the MICAT scandal saga were meant to expeditiously dispense justice, one observer stated objecting to be named in print, then it is a wonder that she folds up while dark clouds hovers over the character and image of her cabinet ministers without pushing the matter to a logical end.
Other analysts contend that the Bropleh saga is giving different, some say preferential, treatment which does not help both the culprit and the government. In the case of other topnotch officials of government, the anonymous source quoted supra said, President Sirleaf and her legal apparatuses moved relatively faster in concluding preliminary probes that underpinned whatever official actions that were taken in those cases.
Amongst cases cited by the source are those that involved Albert Bropleh, former head of the Liberia Telecommunication Corporation (LTA) and Harry Greaves, former Managing Director of the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company (LPRC). Though the suspension of Albert Bropleh, senior brother of Laurent Bropleh, for corruption was criticized because the Sirleaf administration offered him normal working benefits while he served his suspension sentence, he still did not survive. His probe by both national security agencies and the GAC was variously fast tracked and the President's reaction to those reports was nearly instantaneous.
The same was nearly the case with Harry Greaves, Jr., whose revelation of a bribery saga in a lucrative construction contract proved suicidal. Greaves, it can be recalled, accused Aloysius Jappah, a member of the special committee that was investigating the merits and demerits of the notorious Zahkem contract, as soliciting bribe to pass a favorite opinion on the contract that was hotly detested by the National Legislature.
President Sirleaf who immediately suspended Greaves ordered an investigation into the matter, an order expeditiously handled by the Ministry of Justice and others and which reportedly found both Jappah and Greaves culpable. Apparently based on the probe reports, the President axed out Greaves, her longtime colleague and confidant. Some pundits opine that the delays characterizing suspended Information Minister Bropleh's ordeal not only contrast with the two cases involving high profile inner circle members of the Sirleaf administration, but also keeps the reputation of Bropleh in the scandal, and the government in the fight against corruption, in doubt.
Perhaps carrying a false sense of acquittal, one analyst conjectured, Bropleh is gradually returning to normality after a terrible shock of the scandal, as he has begun holding his "Changing Minds, Changing Attitudes" talk show on Truth FM and Real TV and doing other things as if the allegation of fraud against him was now history.
Amid the delays, some keen observers are thinking that the accused man is either assured of freedom from all charges of fraud or that President Sirleaf and administration are buying time to give Bropleh a briefing space before unleashing reprimands against him.
What is becoming clearer by the day is that Bropleh, despite the brave face he parades with, is still haunted by high public suspicion which remains unsettled in the absence of investigation reports from the Ministry of Justice and/or the GAC. This also spills over to Government, particularly President Sirleaf, as doubts still remains over the political will of the regime to prosecute to logical conclusion top officials caught in the web of fiscal misdemeanors, according to the analysts.
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