Divided Lawmakers to Appear Before Liberia's Traditional Leaders

In the wake of the power struggle among members of the House of Representatives at the Capitol Building, the Traditional leaders of Liberia are calling for calm among the members of that body.

The head of the Traditional Council of Chiefs of Liberia, Chief Zanzan Karwor said it is discouraging for Honorable men and women who are supposed to be making laws to benefit the Liberian people to instead be fighting among themselves.

He told FrontPageAfrica that as traditional leaders, they will not sit and allow lawmakers fight among themselves.

He disclosed that the Liberia Council of Chiefs has invited the two groups of lawmakers to appear at the offices of the Council of Chiefs in Sinkor.

Several members of the House of Representatives are rejecting the presence of their Speaker, Alex J. Tyler to preside over regular session in the face of his alleged link to bribery allegation recently exposed by Global Witness, stressing that he should recuse himself from presiding over session until he is exonerated from the allegation.

Dozens of the Representatives including Tokpa Mulbah of Bong County called on their colleagues to continue their support against Speaker Tyler by rejecting him from presiding over session at the National legislature.

The London-based Watchdog Group, Global Witness recently alleged that more than US$950,000 in bribes and other suspicious payments were made to top Liberian officials including Speaker Alex Tyler by the Britain-based Sable Mining Company and its Liberian lawyer, Cllr. Varney Sherman.

Since the indictment of Speaker Tyler for his alleged involvement in the bribery saga of the Global Witness report, the House of Representatives has been divided with one group of lawmakers calling for the Speaker to recuse himself while others are backing the Speaker urging him (Speaker Tyler) to not bow to those calling for his recusal.

With the current confusion at the Capitol, traditional leaders of Liberia say they (traditional leaders) do not expect the lawmakers to disrespect them by failing to appear before the Council.

Chief Karwor said he will convene a meeting between the two group of lawmakers - “They are our children and we are their fathers, we cannot be sitting and allow our children to be fighting among themselves, they cannot tells us no, they will come and we will have meeting with them to solve this problem so our Liberian people work can be done,” he noted.

The power struggle at the House of Representatives has stalled workings at the Capitol Building with the Executive branch of government calling for calm among lawmakers.

Deputy Information Minister Isaac Jackson told FPA that the Executive cannot deal with a divided House of Representatives.

He noted that the executive branch of government is looking forward to lawmakers resolving their problem.

“We from the executive are concerned; the President is concerned and wants the confusion among lawmakers to be resolved. Let this be very clear for the record, the President has no hand in what is unfolding at the Capitol Building,” he noted.

Liberia asks IMF for additional finance and more time

Dear Madame Lagarde

In March 2014, Liberia was hit by the unprecedented outbreak of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). (photo: IMF Chief Lagarde and president Sirleaf). 

The outbreak permeated the social and economic fabric of our country, significantly undermining our economic activities and thwarting our medium-term development program – the Agenda for Transformation (AfT).

However, the measures put into place, including actions aimed at preventing and controlling infection rates, increasing community engagements and ensuring safe burials, as well as the support of our development partners and the international community, have led to successful containment of the epidemic.

On September 3, 2015 our country was declared Ebola free for the second time by the World Health Organization (WHO). Liberia became the first of the three most-affected countries in West Africa to have been declared Ebola free after more than a year of battling the epidemic, even though more recently there have been a few isolated cases.

We are grateful to the IMF for the financial support it provided to Liberia during the crisis for a total of US$130 million through an ad-hoc augmentation under the ECF, disbursement under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF), and debt relief under the Catastrophe Containment and Relief (CCR) Trust.

The economic impact of Ebola has been compounded by the steep decline in commodity prices.

Prior to the outbreak, our country had been growing at about 8 percent on average since 2011, domestic institutions were being re-built and social and health indicators were improving. However, the epidemic weakened activity in all sectors of the economy, with real GDP growth declining from close to 8½ percent in 2013 to 0.7 percent in 2014.

As the country embarked on the road to recovery in 2015 after the devastating Ebola crisis, it is being further confronted by the sharp decline in prices of our major exports, namely iron ore and rubber.

As a result, planned investments in the mining sector have been put on hold by existing mining operators.  A prolonged period of low commodity prices would significantly undermine our tax and export revenues, and could significantly weaken our medium term growth prospects.

We remain fully committed to the objectives set under our ECF-supported program, although the Ebola outbreak weakened our capacity and led to delays in program implementation.

Taking into account the extremely challenging context, looking back to June and December 2014, our performance remained broadly satisfactory. We met most of the end-June 2014 quantitative performance criteria (PCs) and indicative targets (ITs) except the floor on government revenues, net foreign exchange reserves position, and the ceiling on net domestic assets of the central bank.

We missed the floor on government revenues owing to shortfalls in tax and nontax revenues. The floor on net foreign exchange position was missed following a placement of reserves with a domestic LIBERIA 2 bank.

Nonetheless, revenue performance improved markedly in FY2015 in part with the establishment of the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) on July 1, 2014. We met only two out of seven end-December 2014 PCs due to the Ebola outbreak.

We met three out of seven structural benchmarks (SB) (payroll cleanup, publication of FY2016 budget calendar, and pilot on integration of credit-financed projects into the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS)), whereas the SBs on enhancing cash and liquidity management, strengthening the quality of national accounts and submitting the insurance law were completed but with a delay.

Sierra Leone Nigeria superstar Dija was in some hot soup on twitter

Our Sierra Leone sister Dija was in a hot soup yesterday at the Headies 2015 Award with her Mavin record crew. And someone at the Headies shared this photo of her that is currently trending on twitter.

Bo make dem kongosa den lef me sister ya.

UN mission in Liberia looking in to alleged miss conduct by peacekeepers.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has dispatched a preliminary fact-finding team to look into an allegation that two members of its military personnel were involved in a possible case of serious misconduct involving the beating of a teenage boy.

The incident is alleged to have occurred on 4 December in Bong County, according to a statement issued today by the Mission, which added that it first learned of the allegation on 29 December.

"The Mission takes such allegations extremely seriously and dispatched yesterday a preliminary fact-finding team," UNMIL Officer-in-Charge Waldemar Vrey said in the statement.

"While the facts in this case are being established, our thoughts are with the boy, whose condition remains moderately serious, and his family," he added.

The Mission has agreed to facilitate the transfer of the patient on humanitarian grounds from Phebe Hospital to JFK Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia"s capital.

"All necessary steps will be taken to establish the facts in this case," Mr. Vrey stated, while calling for all parties to remain calm and cooperate with those establishing the facts.

Among the tasks mandated to UNMIL by the Security Council is to continue to support the Government of Liberia to consolidate peace and stability in the country and protect civilians.

Ebola outbreak ends in Guinea, Says WHO.

he World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the end of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, two years after the epidemic began there.

Guineans are expected to celebrate the landmark with concerts and fireworks.

The disease killed more than 2,500 people in the West African state, and a further 9,000 in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

However, Liberia has had new cases since the declaration.

 country is considered free of human-to-human transmission once two 21-day incubation periods have passed since the last known case tested negative for a second time.

"It's the best year-end present that God could give to Guinea, and the best news that Guineans could hope for," Ebola survivor Alama Kambou Dore told AFP news agency.

Local health workers echoed a warning from the WHO that vigilance was still vital despite the mood of celebration.

"We have to be very careful, because even if open transmission has been stopped, the disease has not been totally defeated," said Alpha Seny Souhmah, a Guinean health worker and Ebola survivor.
n a statement, the WHO congratulated the Guinean government and people for showing "extraordinary leadership in fighting the epidemic".

But it also noted that there had been 10 new small outbreaks of the virus between March and November.

"The coming months will be absolutely critical," said Dr Bruce Aylward from the WHO's Ebola response team.

"This is the period when the countries need to be sure that they are fully prepared to prevent, detect and respond to any new cases."

The WHO will maintain surveillance and outbreak response teams in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia throughout 2016, Dr Aylward added.

This is another major milestone in the bumpy road to the end of the worst Ebola outbreak in history. It all started in Guinea when the virus emerged, probably from fruit bats, in a rural community deep in the forest.

Guinea saw far fewer cases than neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, yet the virus has been circulating there for longer than anywhere else.

I remember travelling through Guinea at the height of the outbreak, and there was still a lot of denial about Ebola; people told me it was a made-up disease. Suspicion is still rife in some communities, and many simply do not trust their government.

Ebola has made a comeback in Liberia after the country twice declared the end of the epidemic, and there is every possibility it could return to Guinea. It will be up to communities to keep the killer virus at bay, by reporting suspicious deaths and encouraging loved ones to seek treatment if they show symptoms of Ebola.

But medical facilities also need to respond quickly, which will happen for the extra 90-day "heightened surveillance" period. A key question is what will happen after that, particularly for the thousands of Ebola survivors who are still facing health problems.

-BBC