--Tweah challenges incoming government
Outgoing Liberian Finance Minister Samuel Tweah has been talking a lot about economic gains under the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC)-led administration.
At a press conference over the weekend, Minister Tweah expressed a belief that the incoming administration of President-Elect Amb. Joseph Nyumah Boakai cannot reverse these gains.
Tweah said he challenges Boakai to reverse the many economic reforms he had instituted and trash his reforms.
He challenged the incoming Boakai-led administration bring back "waste and large pay gaps" between government workers of the same qualification and experience.
Minister Tweah explained that under difficult circumstances, the CDC-led regime raised the biggest slice of domestic revenue to date, increasing domestic revenue by three percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
He added that they also brought inflation down from 30 percent to single digit in about a year, something he said arguably, is the fastest inflation collapses in history.
Under his watch as Finance Minister, Tweah said the CDC-led government regularized the backlog of government audits they inherited from the Unity Party.
More importantly, he said his government ended disclaimers due to the lack of financial reporting that was allegedly the norm of the Unity Party.
He lamented that they stood up a new Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) where commissioners are beyond removal by any sitting president, setting the gold standard for independence.
Minister Tweah noted that they braved the storm and reformed a broken and dysfunctional wage system without which their government would have collapsed.
"I double dare and challenge the incoming Unity Party administration to reverse that reform and bring back waste and large pay gaps between government workers of the same qualification and experience," Minister Tweah asserted.
Giving reference to his reforms, Minister Tweah disclosed that all these achievements have been confirmed separately in various reports by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and several other international organizations.
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"Over the last two years of MCC scorecards, the CDC administration has produced the best performance on the scorecard since 2007 when it started," he boasted.
He argued that President-elect Joseph Boakai should have on his agenda engaging MCC "on how we can secure a US$ 500 million Compact now that the Government of President Weah has laid the groundworks for marked improvements in a range of governance areas."
But Minister Tweah lamented that disappointingly, after all these achievements, somehow some at the U.S Department of State have never shown a profound appreciation of the gains.
"The last Ambassador sent here, Mr. Michael McCarthy, became an effective opposition to the Government of President Weah," Tweah alleged without giving evidence.
"In meetings at State and Treasury, I have copiously argued there is a disconnect between how State and Treasury were gauging the performance of President Weah and the Government and how other institutions were assessing our performance," Tweah said.
