‘Gongloe will end endemic corruption’
-Says Team Gongloe
Several Liberians under the banner Team Gongloe, supporting renowned Liberian human rights lawyer Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe to contest for president in 2023, have declared that following an intensive search, they have found a Liberian who will end endemic corruption in Liberia and put an end to the country’s leadership quagmire.
Team Gongloe, named Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe as the person it has found, asserting that for several years beginning at the age of his teen at the University of Liberia (UL) up to his present age, the current president of the Liberia National Bar Association (LNBA), Cllr. Gongloe, has demonstrated unflinching commitment to Liberia’s and Liberians’ struggle for justice, equitable distribution of the country’s wealth, economic emancipation and equal participation of the people in decision-making and the affairs of the Liberian state.
With both parents now deceased, Cllr. Gongloe, was born and raised in Liberia 64 years ago, unto the union of a classroom teacher, Wilfred Kehleboe and Elizabeth Menguah Gongloe, in the town of Glehyee-Zopea, Yarwin Mensonneh Statutory District, Nimba County.
He received basic education from the Roman Catholic School System; Saint Francis Primary School in Tappita, and the Saint Mary Secondary School in Sanniquellie, all in Liberia’s northern Nimba County.
Cllr. Gongloe holds a BSc degree in Economics from the University of Liberia; LL.B in law, from the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, University of Liberia; a Certificate in Human Rights Law, from the Columbia University, United States of America; amongst other educational achievements.
As one of Liberia’s foremost human rights lawyers, an astute human rights campaigner, longtime advocate for social justice and human dignity, Cllr. Gongloe, in the late 1970’s, was imprisoned and beaten for speaking out against the government of former President William Richard Tolbert, and later in 2002, for speaking out against now jailed President Charles Ghankay Taylor.
Reading a press statement at a well-attended press conference over the weekend, at the groups’ Zayzay Community, Paynesville Headquarters, during its official launch, Team Gongloe’s founding chairperson; Cllr. Jimmy Saah Bombo said against the backdrop of the group members’ shared belief that “A Better Liberia Is Possible,” they are of the conviction that under the longtime human rights campaigner and social justice advocate, Cllr. Gongloe, as president, Liberia will experience strict and uncompromising adherence to the rule of law, and that the Judiciary Branch of the three-branch government, will be fully independent, and what the group calls “blind justice” would be administered without fear or favor.
The group adds that with Cllr, Gongloe as president of Liberia, all citizens would be equal before the law, and that the Legislature would enact laws that will benefit the totality of the Liberian population instead of just lawmakers themselves and a select few.
Chairman Bombo further told the press conference that with Cllr. Gongloe as Liberia’s next president, corruption will be treated as a capital crime, and public officials would be public servants and not rulers of the people.
“A Liberia in which the citizens are prime movers and shakers of the nation’s economy, not bystanders, while others (foreigners) call the shots,” Team Gongloe’s founding chair Cllr. Bombo added.
Cllr. Bombo: “A Liberia in which the citizens eat what they grow and grow what they eat, a Liberia in which the tenets of separation of powers, check and balance are strictly adhered to unwaveringly by the three branches of government.”
He averred that the last Friday’s launch of Team Gongloe marked another milestone in contemporary Liberian politics, disclosing that his group is an electioneering machinery made up of institutions such as the Movement to Ensure Liberia’s Transformation (MELT), Volunteers for Change (VOICE), Liberians for Integrity (LFI), Information Hub Gongloe (IHG), which he said formed themselves into what he described as a community of Liberians from diverse political, social and economic orientations bonded with the shared belief that with Cllr. Gongloe as president, a better Liberia is possible.
Chairman Bombo said his group is currently persuading Cllr. Gongloe to contest for Liberia’s presidency in the country’s upcoming elections slated for 2023, indicating, “Team Gongloe sincerely hopes the learned counselor will respond positively to the call to service.”
Cllr. Bombo emphasized that it is an indisputable [fact] that Liberia is endowed with enormous natural resources but over the years these resources have not benefitted Liberians.
“In yester years, Liberia was second to Japan in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) – there was economic growth, but that growth did not reflect the quality of life of our people – thus Liberia became a country universally called or referred to [as] ‘growth without development.’” Cllr. Bombo said.
He noted that in this 21st Century, Liberia, amidst enormous resources is still a nation where its people wallow in abject poverty all because its leaders are kleptocrats, tricksters and unpatriotic, adding, “It is therefore time that we have a leader that will redeem this country from the claws of endemic corruption, and propel Liberia on the right trajectory to development, the rule of law, and equal distribution of the nation’s wealth.”
Meanwhile, Chairman Bombo says Team Gongloe is opened to collaboration with likeminded Liberians including social, political and economic groupings in the vanguard for a Liberia that will once again find its place in the comity of nations, and a Liberia that will once more be the leader it once was for the continent of Africa.
