When the Liberian presidency was thrown up in November 2005 for bidding, it was clear that the winner would know no rest until the nation stops panting from 14 years of chaos, death, mayhem, and destruction.

	• President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

The reason is it was projected that there would be too many challenges, too many obstacles to those challenges, too few a willing and sincere hands on deck to help find solutions, and just far too many so anxious for early relief.

President Sirleaf seems to understand this, and some say she has been making commendable strides. Critics however say her undoing is she often puts rest before that all-important vital search for national solutions. But is this a just assessment?

The Analyst Staff Writer has been looking at this question from the outlook of observers and analysts.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf flies to the U.S. for a two-week “well-deserved rest” after attending a commissioning ceremony in the Kingdom of Denmark this week.

While in the U.S., the President said she will undertake a few public and private activities and then take a rest, which she believes she deserves. The President disclosed her itinerary when she addressed the Liberian people, April 13, 2008, on her administration’s successes and the stubborn challenges that tend to drown those successes.

“I leave the country on Tuesday, first for a few days official trip to Denmark where I will join 17 other world leaders in launching the Africa Commission proposed and chaired by the Danish Prime Minister,” President Sirleaf said.

She noted further that the Africa Commission will formulate new creative strategies to strengthen international cooperation with Africa. The Liberian chief executive then noted that she would use the occasion to attempt the reactivation of Danish-Liberian bilateral relationship.

Critics say the President should then be returning to Liberia to monitor and find solutions to the rising prices of the nation’s staple food, rice, and petroleum products that she admitted is critical and requires more than government subsidy and price control to contain.

She said while the government could do nothing to control the increase of commodity prices on the world market, it did remove the US $2.00 tax on a bag of rice. This, she said, will go a long way to keep the prices of rice down even though it has adversely affected this year’s fiscal budget by over US$3 million.

“Without this action, the price of a bag of rice would be more than the current official price of US$26 to US$28 dollars for the four to five months stock that is on hand.

The real solution to this problem is that we must grow our own rice. Every space in the back yard, every farm, every community must start to grow rice, cassava, plantain, for projections show that increase in food prices will be with us for a long time to come. In this regard, we have approved and forwarded for Legislative ratification a US$30 million Concession Agreement for investment in large scale mechanized rice production,” the President said Sunday.

Observers say the President appears to think that the disclosure answers the nation’s anxiety, like putting a pacifier in a mouth of a crying infant, and that she would do anything but what critics expect: return home to make continued critical searches that will make real the activation of the nation’s agro industry for self-sufficiency in food production.

So while the fate of the nation’s agro industry rests with legislative approval, the President appears contented that it was time for something else: spring break in the U.S. with family members and friends, plus a few behind-the-curtains activities.

“After that, I go to the United States for two weeks of Church Conference, fundraising, medicals and a few days of what I hope you will agree is a well earned rest. I will return early May with renewed and reinforced commitment both in body and spirit,” President Sirleaf said.

She said her administration recognized the stranglehold rising prices was having on the budget of families but urged Liberians to exercise restraints, taking into consideration the government’s limitation with regards to controlling price rises triggered by global market forces.

“We hope to continue to activate our Mines and our Agricultural Concessions to provide jobs and we intend to increase civil servants pay in a small way in the next fiscal year budget to enable them to cope with the anticipated global increase in commodity prices,” she noted.

She then called on ordinary citizens and critics to “gives due recognition to the many good things, the massive development that is taking place all over the country – the building of schools and clinics and roads, the expansion in electricity and water supply, improvements at air and sea ports, the settlement of domestic and external arrears, the credibility and good image that Liberians now enjoy all over the world.”

The Liberian leader said several challenges remain and there was a long way to go to meet the needs and expectations of the people, adding that with God’s help the nation has made progress since 2006 and would continue to do even more. She did not elaborate.

While some say the President has a point, many say a rest at this time of crucial national challenges is “ill-timed” and reminiscent of the old days when presidential pleasure retreats were held in foreign countries at the expense of poor tax payers.

“I think the President deserves a rest and medical checkup abroad. She deserves it after year-round productive activities that took her from country to country and around Liberia. Liberia’s problems will not finish today; so, there is no point for one leader to kill herself. Others will come and continue from where she will stop,” said Kingsley Tamba of Oldest Congo Town.

Kingsley said the President’s health was as important as seeking solutions to the nation’s challenges but that it would be a sad mistake for her to try to put anything before her health and rest. “Rest is health and everyone needs it, even presidents. They are human beings too,” he said

But even in that case, critics are unbending, the thing to do at this movement of path finding is not to fly to the U.S., another people’s country, for so-called church conference and well-deserved rest.

“When President Bush wants to rest, and he seldom does, he goes to Camp David presidential retreat in Catoctin Mountain Park, central Maryland.

When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Nicolas Sarközy, or Chinese President Hu Jintao wants a rest, they retreat to presidential resorts in their individuals countries. They do same when they want medical examination or treatment.

They do not take pleasure in going to countries other than theirs to seek such pleasantries. It is this that President Sirleaf is fond of doing. Since taking public gavel, she had been to the U.S. on countless occasions, many of them private and of no consequence to the Liberian people and nation; no tie to the present challenges facing this nation and its people.

Why? Why is the President rushing to the U.S. at every given opportunity as if the U.S. is a territory of Liberia or vice versa?” wondered Alphonso D. Fallah of Logan Town who claimed to be a “political observer”.

According to him, unless President Sirleaf or her successors concretize the pride of the nation through the construction of those things they like about other nations, Liberia would remain underdeveloped.

“When a leader abandons the problems of her country, claiming that she had put into place self-executing plans, and goes to another country for a rest she believes she deserves because she feels self-justified by her achievements, it is sign that that nation’s reconstruction would continue to hinge on lip-service and relativism,” Fallah said.

Martha J. Siahway agreed: “How can the President leave all this trouble and go to the U.S. for church conference and to rest as if she is a pastor? I think this is wrong; it shows the same old thing our leaders used to do.

Take huge amount of public funds while the rest of the people hardly eat a square meal a day, purchase a bungalow in the U.S., take a do-nothing entourage of friends, bodyguards, and lucky cabinet officials on annual holidays, and contend that that is your entitlement as a leader.

Can we afford this at this time after we saw how it left this nation poor and corrupt over almost a hundred years? I don’t think so. We elected Ellen because we thought she, as a woman and a mother, would not repeat the evil of old.”

Another observer, Junior Z. Poker of Paynesville said while he recognized the President’s right to rest and seek medical examination as a human being and leader of the nation, it was strange that the President of a country would go to another country for church conference as though she were an ordinary person.
“Can you imagine what that is?

The President of an African nation in some state in the U.S. attending church conference and raising funds? Think about it; is it not a disgrace of the presidency? We are poor, but our leader should not stoop so low. If she wants to rest, it is a challenge before her to build a presidential resort in the Sapo National Forest.

That is the challenge for a president who wants to solve problems and stay near her people. Remember nearness is critical to problem solving. The closer you are to the problem, the more compulsion you feel to find solution,” said Precious J. Solomon of the University of Liberia who claimed that she and the President attend the same church.

Analysts say each of the points raised in agreeing with or differing with President Sirleaf’s decision to go to the U.S. for a spring break has their place in an extended debate over rest and commitment to national reconstruction.

They were however quick to note that the President’s believe that she deserves a rest brings up the critical question of when and where the leadership of a suffering nation should lay down its tools without putting the nation’s interest on ice and jeopardizing its interest.

President Sirleaf, they noted, should search this question and address the timeliness and propriety of her visit for church conference and rest while critical challenges wait.

“Or she risks being accused of subordinating the nation’s plight to personal comfort. This supposition is heightened especially by the fact that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is about to visit Liberia for the first time to hold talks with the President and UNMIL just as the President takes spring break in the U.S.,” they said.

Meanwhile a government spokesman told The Analyst late last night that the Vice President of Liberia would take care of Secretary General’s visit.

News dispatches so far did not disclose the nature of the talks Secretary Ban intends to hold with President Sirleaf and UNMIL, but analysts say any talks will center on UNMIL troops drawdown vis-à-vis the benchmarks set by the United Nations for that drawdown vis-à-vis where the Liberia government stands.