Using the BathroomUsing the BathroomI will take the Liberian legislators’ word for it that their bathroom in the Capitol Building is not a place anyone would want to be for any reason or length of time. And they drove that point home to Liberia’s Finance Minister, Mr. Nathaniel Barnes, using the bathroom only as a threat – a means of persuasion, if you will – for getting straightforward answers regarding the long delay for paying their salaries. After all, what would be the point of using the full force of their bathroom when a mere threat of using it might suffice for now. And that’s something Mr. Barnes ought to consider next time the lawmakers’ salaries and other benefits are unusually late – that is, way past their usual two-year overdue period.
You can tell that Representative James Kpangbai (House member for Bong County) was pissed (See bathroom): ‘‘They have their air-conditioned cars fill with gas every day. They are playing on us as if we are stupid people. We should keep that gentleman in the bathroom until he gives us everything that belongs to us,’’ reports Pan African News Agency in an October 25, 2000, dispatch. The ‘‘gentleman’’ in this case was the Minister of Finance.
There could be a bill introduced to force scheduled dispensation of legislative perks and, therefore, outlaw the legislative bathroom as a lobbying tool. But the trouble – or should I say the law as the Liberian Legislature sees it – is that the lawmakers cannot act on their own (that is, outside their joint legislative bathroom) to fashion legislation for correcting any social or administrative ills, unless they are petitioned by ‘‘ten thousand citizens.’’ This is according to Kekura Kpoto, President Pro Tempore of the Liberian Senate as I reported it in ‘‘Legislating by Petition.’’ This reminds me of one thing: We have met the enemies, and they are stupid.
It is obvious that no issue is closer to the hearts of the Liberian Legislature than the concern about their own perks. But granted that they are as selfish as that, we should be able to award them points for the skill with which they pursue even that objective, narrow as it is. To that end, it is interesting how the legislators who are bent out of shape over the delay of their ‘‘entitlements’’ have aimed their charges narrowly at Finance Minister Barnes and broadly at the ‘‘government.’’ They would, therefore, rather send Finance Minister Barnes to their bathroom as punishment than mention the name of the person who sits atop the ‘‘government.’’ And I will not call names myself because I do not want the specter of visiting the legislative bathroom hanging over my head either. After all, it’s not my perk that’s at stake here.
The bathroom threat did, however, yield at least a lead to the possible source of all this trouble – the way revenue is collected. But you wouldn’t think there was a problem with the apparent freelance revenue collection unless someone explained it to you. ‘‘During the deliberation, House Speaker Nyudueh Morkonmana said he was perplexed that some government agencies are collecting government revenues when the law authorizes only the Finance Ministry to do so.’’ The more, the better? Wrong.
Collecting the revenues may not, in and of itself, be a bad thing. But the intimation is unmistakable – the other ‘‘agencies’’ are spending (or, as we say in Liberia, are ‘‘eating’’) the money they collect. But Finance Minister Barnes at least understands why: ‘‘… the government agencies were collecting money in an attempt to manage or pay for their own operations.’’ So the budgeting cycle has understandably skipped one little step called the treasury.
Of course, for those of us who were born in the interior regions of Liberia that bore the distinction of ‘‘provinces’’ – as opposed to ‘‘counties’’ – tax collection was one of the main functions of the Department of War. Hence the tax agents were soldiers from the Liberian Frontier Force, assisted by legions of locally hired provincial ‘‘messengers’’ who, together with the soldiers, had the hands-on approach of corporal punishment for delinquent tribal taxpayers. From that standpoint, we have come a long way, but an even longer way to go.
Yet, the further danger for the current Legislature in blaming the government for deficiency in the disbursement of legislative benefits is that the assembly itself is a central part of the government not only as provided for in the Constitution, but for consisting largely of people who rode to power with their chief benefactor and fellow partisan in the Executive branch. However, in terms of the exercise of their explicit duties under the Constitution, the Legislature is a mere utensil of its Executive master’s whelm, even if its members had sense enough to know what their duties were. Speaker Morkonmana, in that regard, has vocal amplitude but no substance.
Ignorance in the Legislature could be tolerated or perhaps forgiven if the mischievous legislators’ selection of taunting targets were reckless across the board. Not so. The Liberian legislators are judicious enough to realize that taking on what would be the natural object of their parliamentary curiosity could prove fatal even with the best of intentions. Therefore they go after improbable targets like – what the heck – the United States of America.
The poorest and perhaps the stupidest parliament in all of Africa is also the most traveled. Liberian Senator Thomas Nimely, according to my source, was in the United States shortly after telling U.S. ambassador to Liberia to ‘‘pack [his] bags and leave the country.’’ And that was after the September 2000 tour of the United States by a joint Liberian legislative committee, headed by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, to forestall America’s threat of banning travel to the U.S. by higher-up Liberian government officials and their families.
On top of the less structured cabinet sorties into Europe and the U.S., more than half of the current administration’s cabinet officers have their wives safely abroad. So if the current Liberian president’s desire to force the cabinet wives back home doesn’t work, the U.S. travel ban may finally drive the wives home. Between the two countries, the U.S. is a preferred place to get stuck when any ban – U.S. or Liberian – is applied, because the next stop after a ban is the search for alibi toward political asylum in which perpetrators also make good candidates.
For the record, however, the U.S. threat is now a reality. Liberian First Lady, Jewel Taylor, who thought she could use a couple more months in the U.S., was encouraged by the American government to return home in mid October 2000. We could split hair here by arguing that her husband had already beckoned home all the notable wives. So who’s to say she went home under threat of deportation? After all, there is still something called diplomacy.
There is no denying that the bathroom is a potent threat, but I hope that the more traditional checks and balances among co-equal branches of a government will one day replace Liberia’s legislative bathroom as a place to pass the time and whatever else comes naturally – whether or not punishment is an objective. – Tarty Teh
Copyrighted © Tarty Teh 2000
Washington, D.C., October 28, 2000
