Liberia president defends one-year record, despite opposition attacks

Liberian president George Weah has defended his first year in office stressing that the government’s performance indicated that they had neither disappointed or failed the people.

Weah in delivering his state of the nation address on Monday evening also fended off opposition criticisms of failed promises and superintending over a poor economy leading to hardships and high living cost.

He said in part: “Today, I can state with understandable pride that we did not disappoint our people, neither did we fail them.

“With the support from our two other branches of government and our international partners during the course of this first year in office I can confidently say that Liberia is far better today under our leadership than it was 12 months ago when we were entrusted with the mandate to serve our people.”

The twelve months ago he refers to was the end of the decade-long tenure of his predecessor, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected woman president.

Sirleaf’s party fielded her then Vice-President Joseph Boakai who failed to win the bid to continue the party’s work. Weah beat Boakai in a poll runoff to win the presidency.

The former Africa and world football great put poverty eradication at the top of his agenda as president. An appreciable level of infrastructure have been built over the last year.

The government also announced free tertiary education for new entrants into universities at a time when students were holding protests over high fees in public universities.

The media has also been another headache for the Weah administration accused serially of muzzling the press. The disappearance of newly printed bank notes worth over $100m also hangs around the neck of the government.

On the particular issue he assured that an investigative team looking into the issue was due to deliver its report in February this year.