SOURCE: TEWROH-WEHTOE SUNGBEH
Central Bank Governor J. Mills Jones, who is not known for his politics,
sent shockwaves into the heart of Liberian politics when his aggressive
act of doling out micro loans to businesses came under attack from some
legislators who saw it as a way of influencing potential voters and
preparing him for the 2017 Liberian presidential race.
So troubled by Jones’ supposedly ‘covert’ gesture of implementing a key
policy of his institution, the Liberian legislature, headed by Speaker
Tyler, Senate Pro-tempore Gbezohngar Milton Findley, and other key
members are mad as hell and are threatening to audit the Central Bank of
Liberia.
As if the threat to audit the Central Bank of Liberia is not enough,
Mr. Tyler and his colleagues also threatened to call for an amendment of
the Act that created the Central Bank of Liberia.
Tyler and friends want to review it, and perhaps control and
micromanage the internal functions of the bank as it relates to
decision-making.
The emotional outbursts and mindless overreaction by these grown men
and women who jumped all over themselves to act recklessly on Mills
Jones’ unannounced presidential aspirations did not stop there.
The toothless and mostly Monrovia-based legislative body known for
rampant corruption and overpaying itself for doing nothing, quickly
jumped on the notion of voting on a selectively discriminatory senate
bill that distinguishes itself as a “Stop Mills Jones Bill.”
Those legislators want us to believe that Mills Jones cynically
manipulated the micro loan program at the Central Bank, when he gave out
micro loans to struggling businesses to influence the 2017 presidential
elections.
In their painfully narrow legislative minds, however, this is a
‘violation’ that warrants enacting a law that forbids such practice.
Part of the new law reads below:
“The Executive Governor of the Central Bank of Liberia and members of
the Board of Governors are prohibited from contesting political
office(s) while serving in their respective offices and shall not be
qualified to contest any elected office within three years consecutively
after the expiration of their tenure with the CBL.”
This particular law doesn’t make any sense at all; and it ought to be re-written or put in the trash bin.
The law is discriminatory and targets an individual, a bank Governor
whom in the minds of most Liberians is doing exactly what he was hired
to do; to help struggling businesses with micro loans. For those reasons
alone, he shouldn’t be punished.
Truth is the recently enacted law is an embarrassingly terrible law
with national implications that has traces of incompetence and
pretentiousness in it.
Simply put, you don’t get fired for doing a good job.
However, if your boss thinks you deviated from policy when you failed
to follow the proper procedures in implementing a policy, you are either
asked to do it right the next time, you are reprimanded or fired.
As it is done in the US and in other developed countries, laws are put
in place that bars former employees from lobbying their former employers
for X number of years after leaving a particular job.
The law was implemented across the board to protect the interest of
organizations from conflict of interest, and also to discourage those
with inside knowledge of their former employers from quickly benefiting
from what they know.
It is not a targeted law intended to pursue a particular person because
of a narrow belief that the individual is a presidential favorite who
has future presidential aspirations, as it is being whispered in
Liberian political circles that Mills Jones is the heir apparent to the
presidency.
If Mr. Jones is Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s choice to succeed her in
2017, the right thing to do is to organize and formulate a unified
winning strategy to defeat Mr. Jones.
Enacting a targeted law as if Mills Jones is not a Liberian, is discriminatory and un-Liberian.
However, the paranoid in Liberia right now stemming from the mindless
illusion that J. Mills Jones, Central Bank Governor – quiet, bookworm –
some will say ‘intellectual’ who perhaps never ran anything significant
other than the institution he now heads, and has never dabbled into
anything resembling organized national politics, suddenly has
presidential aspirations to succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2017, is
mind boggling.
The Central Bank of Liberia was established by an Act of the Liberian
Legislature in l999 to do among other things, do business with
non-financial institutions to “foster monetary, credit and financial
conditions conducive to orderly, balanced and sustained economic growth
and development; management of aggregate credit in the economy by
indirect means, by loan securitization, purchase and sale of securities,
transactions in derivatives and foreign exchange and through the
establishment of required reserves of commercial banks under its
jurisdiction.”
I certainly will be on the side of those legislators right now
demanding that Mills Jones be reprimanded if the decision to disburse
those micro loans to struggling businesses were made singularly, and not
with the consent of his five-member Board of Governors.
The question now is, did Mr. Jones put this crucial policy decision to a
vote and got the blessings of his colleagues before implementing it?
And did Alex Tyler and company rushed to act only to do more harm to the
system?
J. Mills Jones, as far as I am concerned, is not a political threat; and seriously, is not the problem.
The problem is the flawed Liberian political system. It needs a complete overhaul.
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