Afrobarometer, the world-renowned research entity, researched Liberia covering the period of October to December 2022. The research concluded that eighty percent of the people of Liberia believe that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction. On Monday, December 23, 2024, The Front-Page Africa Daily newspaper of Liberia published the main headline that eighty percent of the people of Liberia are of the view that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction.
The wrong direction is that Liberia has longstanding and widespread poverty that has become the pretext for violence, which, at times, includes coup d'etat and civil war. Both of these forms of violence have been experienced by Liberians, as seen in the coup d'etat of 1980 and the civil war of 1989 to 2003, which took the lives of at least 300,000 people and injured many more people. Thousands of troops from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), called ECOMOG, and thousands of troops from the United Nations, called UNIMIL, came to Liberia to stop and prevent the violence, respectively. UNIMIL numbered 15,000 men and women, the world's largest United Nations Peace-keeping Force at the time.
The Liberian Bishop and Former Vice President of Liberia, Bennie Warner, reminded us correctly in his remark that the problem with Liberia is us Liberians. The powers that be in Liberia expect foreigners to solve our problem. In essence, we practice Westernization rather than Liberianization. Western education is making our education a MESS. The Doris Banks Henries' history book of Liberia continues to bring the view in schools that people came from the United States of America (USA) to Christianise the heathens, the natives of Liberia. This form of Christianisation is the continuation of the slave mentality that leads to the policy and practice of the system of productivity for exportation to former colonialists. This is the enslavement of poor individuals by rich individuals and the enslavement of poor countries by rich countries. Therefore, Liberia's governance is MESS.
Liberia is being placed in the Right Direction through Awareness Raising within the Rule of Law rather than the rule of outlaw, the awareness raised by the people who love Liberia. This way of correction is working well. Check out the facts. Look at the record of the October 10, 2023 election voting. Out of the world record-breaking 76.86 % of the voting-age population of Liberia who voted, they voted not to re-elect almost all of the Legislators who wanted to be re-elected. This trend is highly likely to continue in the ensuing elections. This method works well due to the awareness that it remains non-violent.
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The awareness-raising method is the best way to transform the unfair prevailing electoral system into a fair, enduring one. This transformation is the only and best way to get persons with good records elected to bring in the system of Justice, the indispensable ingredient for Peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country.
