Over the weekend, the government initiated a national reconciliation and healing program at the EJS Ministerial Complex in Congo Town, Monrovia.
The program aimed to develop a mindset whereby the people of the country will forgive each other’s, and let the grotesque memory of past be obliterated from the minds.
During the program, President Joseph Nyuma Boakia, extended government’s apology to all those who were one way of the other, affected in the past during the 1980 coup as well as the fifteen years of turmoil; a gloomy and sadistic phenomenon, which destroyed the nation’s social, political and economic fabrics.
We deem this move highly commendable, because reconciliation is the way of life; a way towards freedom and harmony; a way to break the captivity of national hatred and a way to rebuild national unity and strength.
However, we think reconciliation can never truly hold in the absence of its reality. Reconciliation can never hold just by mere rhetoric. Reconciliation never holds just by mere imagination and dreams.
In order for reconciliation to be genuine and realistic consistent with its intended purpose, the pus needs to be extracted to allow the sore to heal in a perfect form and manner.
The pus referenced herein has to do with getting rid of the culture of poverty through availability of jobs for the citizens, who have, and continue to bend low under the weight of poverty from time to time.
Poverty is a breeding grand for anger, temptations and evil thinking. Poverty never allows joy and happiness to prevail in a given land. Poverty allows no human community to happily unite. Poverty brews and re-enforces the existence of the memory of the ugly past, thereby, hindering the possibility of forgiveness.
Unarguably, the country has all it takes to be a prosperous nation. It has its abundant shares of God given wealth obviously meant to be exploited to support the nation’s social and economic health. For instance, Liberia has abundant gold, diamond, forest and all others as far as the ecosystem is concerned.
Unfortunately, the nation remains held hostage in the prison of poverty while its people are always crying and crying all of the times. This happens all, because the spirit of national loyalty is lacking on the part of the vast majority of the people.
This happens all because those in leadership are just belly-driven politicians, whose dreams are only to fill personal pockets as opposed to lifting the people, who own power and the land from poverty.
This is why we are calling on the government to extract the pus if the sore is to be healed.