By
Sarr Abdulai VANDI PhD
Senior Fellow & Professional Associate
International Telecommunications
The East-West Centre
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
The Press Secretary to President William Richard TOLBERT Jr, John Milton GREAVES, creates a fascinating journey of political intrigue, diabolical cunning, warmongering, and the quest for cruel and unusual power by a dangerous, crooked, and bitter woman of conflicting identities and convoluted originalities.
Set against the backdrop of West Africa, in the Grain Coast, THE FIST OF MACHIAVELLI takes the reader to three continents in a story of greed, manipulation and murder for raw revenge and recidivist autocratic political power.
The fictional character, Esther Jones SAMBOLAH, is the Notorious EJS and disreputable and wicked Ellen Eugenia Johnson-SIRLEAF, who comes out of a brutal marriage and intriguing and disruptive love affairs of the Usual Suspects et RealPolitik Machinations, vowing to get revenge by any means necessary.
Her goal was to rule the Republic of Liberia, and unfortunately and accidentally, from 2006 through 2017, any man standing in her path did so at significantly dangerous risks.
Of the 24th POTROL, EJS turbulence and the tumultuous 12-year rule and State Capture of the Republic and HomeLand, she (1) legalised bribery and normalised corruption, (2) she is disgustingly a recidivist on bribery, favouritism, nepotism, and proper vetting and appointments in government, who is being led astray by grasping Chums and Subordinates and the Underlings, (3) the Ellen Johnson-SIRLEAF Administration(s) is Omertà, the Notorious cabal régime of the corrupt, the incompetent, and the banditti, (4) the mysterious and pervasive elimination, exclusion, and marginalisation of analysts, critics, detractors, and adversaries, (5) the arrogance of power and abuse of authority to shield and protect her family and favourites, et al.
The Madame President is the flawed architect or, more correctly, Agent Provocateur of the Commonwealth and Liberia, democratic process, good governance and peaceful coexistence.
Yet, her legacy as Africa’s foremost female democratically elected President and Chief of State is fouled by high corruption and filth, systemic nepotism and rampant cronyism and the Executive bribery and unwilling disbelief and coercion of the Legislature and Judiciary.
Furthermore, there was a rebranding of Liberia’s political and economic patronage. It was brutal, pervasive and unprecedented. It comprises an elite cartel and broad-based network of crooked politicians, Pétite party leaders, unprofessional bureaucrats, fake intelligentsias and functional illiterates, shadow businesspeople and mostly emigré who share the spoils and benefits of the State Capture.
The network binds together and resists pressure from political and economic competitors. Occasional Grumblers and infrequent Capers are bought off and paid off. They are marginalised and often blackmailed into silence and imposed self-exile. And constantly exposed to perpetual dependence and rendered irrelevant and inconsequential.
Reconciliation remains elusive, and national cohesion is in decline and negligible. The Republic is disintegrating quickly, and the population is disenchanted and restless. The Republic’s social network is a bubbling volcano ripe with dangerous and catastrophic explosions. Primary public services are poor, non-existent and inaccessible, or beyond the reach of most of the citizens.
Essential elements of brand ELLEN 2005 and 2011, respectively, were trustworthiness, competence, international contacts and connections, private sector footprint and global reach; virtues the candidate used to contrast herself with other candidates and her predecessors. She promised honesty in foreign policy, efficiency and transparency in economic and fiscal affairs, and the practical and equitable management of the Republic’s resources. She even pledged devolution of governance and precision in governing. We now know that the above was empty exaggerations and symptomatic narcissism.
The truth is that Ellen Johnson-SIRLEAF is persisting and has been at the centre of the recent 52 years, 1973–2022, of Liberia’s chequered history, sowing the seeds of conflict and disunity, agitating and financing rebellions and wars, commandeering poor governance and economic thievery.
She exposed and popularised the wretchedness and nuances and the irregularities and illegalities of nepotism and cronyism in ugly governance and crooked Statecraft in the ache TWP oligarch régimes, 1847-1980.
Yet, in her accidental and incidental Presidency, 2006-2018, she boldly, capriciously, and surreptitiously embraced, practised, normalised, and legalised nepotismo to unprecedented Echelons.
It was in 1973, serving as a guest speaker at the graduation ceremonies of her alma mater, the College of West Africa (CWA), a high school in central Monrovia, the Capital and commercial City of Liberia. CWA was initially an exclusive Citadel and a Capstone for offspring and siblings of the Americos Liberia and Congau or Congo; the Sierra Leone version of Creoles or repatriated African and mixed-race and freed enslaved people. Also, CWA is notorious for breathing Gays and Lesbians.
When she blasted off a severe political attack against the colonialist and ruthless Oligarchy True Whigs Party (TWP) and scandalously disowned her Americos-Liberian Ancestors and tribe.
Interestingly and capriciously, she again distanced herself from her Americo-Liberian roots in favour of her irregular maternal-German grandfather roots in the 2006 Joint U.S. Congressional Address in Washington, DC. The truth is that Ellen’s mother, Martha, was born into poverty in the Atlantic Coast beach City of Greenville, Sinoe, Liberia, to an ethnic Krao grandmother, Juah SARWEE, and her unwedded Mariner-German Liebhaber.
Juah SARWEE sent Ellen’s mother, Martha, to the Capital City of Monrovia when her German Liebhaber had to flee the country after Liberia declared war on Nazi Germany during WWI. Cecilia DUMBAR, a member of a prominent Americo-Liberian family in the Capital City, adopted and raised Martha in the Americo-Liberian autocratic and Colonialist Arrogance of Power fashion and Oligarch Values and dictates and embedded them in the future President.
Ironically, it was the U.S. that pressured and instructed Liberia to declare War on the Nazis and Germany in World War II. Germany, at the time, was a commercial and economic powerhouse in Liberia. Incidentally and intriguingly, the irregular and unusual liaison between Ellen Eugenia, ethnic Krao grandmother and a German Mariner at the Commercial Sea Port of Sinoe County to the Southeast Coast of Liberia on the Atlantic Ocean City gave birth to the high mulatto mother of the future Madame President.
And in her false prism of intersectional feminism and gender equality in governance and statecraft, the Octogenarian Hag has shown to be an outright fraud and a hypocrite.
She is a wicked, cruel and unusual Witch, barely staying alive and kicking, a cripple sauntering en route to link and connect with the Ancestors in the Netherworld and the Underworld.
#MarkedPoliticalVictims
#WilliamTUBMAN
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#SamuelDOE
#CharlesTAYLOR
#GyudeBRYANT
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#JosephNyumahBOAKAI, etcetera.
