Governance in Liberia

· In the historical context, Liberia was founded by an NGO. This is part of its unique, history that set the pace for what ended up being the country’s governance structure. American colonization society was an organization formed in the US to repatriate freed slaves to Liberia. The government structure that was found took all of its guidance and instructions from this NGO.

· After that there was an attempt from the British and French to take Liberian territory. Finally, the US stepped in. Until then, the US had not given any support to the development of the country, but the organization had no authority to run the country. However, somewhere again, because they had no means and no capacity for good financial management, they brought in Firestone, a rubber company that came in to build a plantation giving loans and managing the country's financial affairs. But they had no real governance structure.

· Liberia’s constitution was not home grown, to recognize the equity of the two segments of society. So, Liberia adopted the governance structure of the United States, at a time when they had no ability or knowledge. They had three branches of government, but simply because the USA did it that way. And therefore, independence of these institutions was always very poor because it was run by the same people from the settlers and obviously they protected each other. There was no governance that ensured equal access at the population equity, real justice in the population. Liberia continued that way for a long time until education improved, and people began the process of resistance and protests, before multiparty activities starting. And the government structure was always poor in this capacity. And so, the US was always sending a group of people to run it, as special commission for government operation.

· This was before the coup. A president who came in and started to revise or revamp governance was Tubman, but he ruled for 37 years. By this time, he had enough people educated and they had the US structure and they had had a lot of support them from the USA to help build the government structures. So we had a form of functioning government, and this was about the periods of the 1950s.

· However, at the same time there was a whole new parallel structure of governance in the rural areas, where the indigenous people largely concentrated because of the failure for integration. And so, and that was the chieftaincy type of government. And that prevailed until well into the 70s. In fact, Liberia still has the chieftaincy system today, except they didn’t have the kind of absolute power that they had in those days when there was this separation between the governance in the cities or indeed the coastal areas. They had their traditional means of governing like their own means of mediation, their own means of justice and much of that means of justice was ritualistic. The coastal and city government condemned the chieftaincy system, and this brought a lot of clashes. There were fights between the two sides in the early days of nationhood.

· By the time when Taubam ruled, Liberia now had a large investment come into the country in the mining sector, particularly Firestone, in the rubber sector. Lots of people from the US were now coming in along with support. Bilateral relations also began, because Liberia's most of its attention was on international relations, diplomacy, and politics. During the Taubman administration, Liberia then had the semblance of a modern state government with functional institutions, but still the power, privilege, positions of influence, and the authority was still vested in the settler's class. Yes, there were many educated indigenous people who were being placed in positions but still either real or perceive the settlers were in charge. The breakthrough on that came with the Torbert administrations. In the 1969 conference when Sirleaf spoke out against the government, and that brought her to Harvard, when Sirleaf returned, Sirleaf went into the Tolbert administration and ultimately ascended the ranks. In the ranks, Tobert, tried to introduce a new institutional norm like fairness in the selection on the civil service, moving more towards a meritocracy. He created a civil servant agency, that had the right laws and procedures for selection, for placements, for promotion, not fully up to international standards because the society was so small. However, everybody knew everybody, and everybody was related to everybody. So, building a strong society of independent institutions was very difficult on the taking.

· However, capacity developed over time, as methods of government improved overtime. The chieftaincy was diluted because they now they were forced to fall under the central government, and so their full absolute authority was broken even though on cultural basis, the structures stayed in place, but they no longer had authority.

· Liberia have always been under capacitated because once we got into the periods of conflict, even the strong governance institutions that we had built were undermined by exodus.

President Sirleaf with the Liberian Peace Corps team. A program that she encouraged for capacity buiilding

· Most of the educated, well-placed capable population during conflict, many people flee to the United States. The USA was like the mother country, a place for people to run for refuge when there is any trouble, they pack up and go to the States. And, and so because we had the situation of a boom bust. Where one day everything's well, things are booming then there’s a conflict because we had these series of coup d’etat, then we got back into getting the institutions working again and then conflict. The continuing exodus affected the roots of people. The most affected were the young people because their parents were in continuous exodus. Most of them lost even their culture because many children were born in the USA and were were no longer citizens at the country anymore.

· Introduction a meritocracy: There were efforts even during my administration to introduce such a system. Sirleaf thought of introducing a governing authority with a true institutionalized permanence. So, our governing system has always been subject to political interference. In Sirleaf’s administration of course, because Sirleaf again was stressing on efficiency and rigor the level of interference was not totally out of control. Sirleaf tried to strengthen institutional independence. It was important to do this, because with political interference most decisions are not in favor of national interest. They mostly support personal and political interests, alliances and friendships. Sirleaf really fought to get rid of this and we started the process of reforming the civil service and making it a full meritocracy. The institutions of higher learning as well we made sure that they too were subject to a merit system.

· Liberia’s constitution gives the President the right to appoint 470 positions in government, which is a large number for a small country. With few institutions- A President commands a large part. Sirleaf introduced the tenure system of 10 years. So even though the constitution gave the president the right to select people, with the tenure system it would allow people who were elected on the basis of merit to have a certain fixed period. Where the President would not dismiss them unless for a very unique cause. And that cause had to be grave like something related to threatening the security of the state or largely involving misappropriation of public revenues. So, a problem of a high scale human rights abuses. It had to be something very grave, otherwise the President would not remove them. And so many of the people in my administration carried over to the new administration. They're now being fired or the tenure has now run out. And Sirleaf think they've changed the law now to say there would be no tenure, the President will have to appoint people.

· The system of governance in the post-conflict administration, which Sirleaf ran introduced a lot of international standards and this led to more efficiency, more effectiveness in governance and that enabled us to attract a large number of qualified people who had repatriated.

· The other thing she did, was to strengthen the governing system. She specialized partnership arrangements through the support of NGO’s, philanthropic and foundations. She we had a series of programs, for example there was a particular donor who just gave $1 billion to recruit either like Liberian or non-Liberians to specific positions where you wanted to fill a gap. And that brought in some new people including Liberians. There was a program transfer of knowledge from repatriated citizens, that UNDP ran. The initiative brought in a group of people that were then put out. Sirleaf also started a Presidents Young Professional program, which we took young graduates from the school, put them through a selection process that was based on merit and then put them through a couple of weeks specialized training of introducing them to governance procedures and then put them in the different ministries they were interested in. At the Ministry they were placed under the mentorship of a higher-level officials, who would work with them. And Sirleaf think by the end of the administration we had placed a hundred and something young people but young people whose education was in Liberia. They were not repatriated. They were taken from right the local universities.