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Claim: “In the government I serve[d], tenure positions were respected,” Ex-President George Weah has said.
Verdict: Misleading. Multiple media reports indicate that the Weah administration frequently violated tenure positions.
Full Text
Former Liberian President George Weah has criticised President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s administration for allegedly disregarding laws regarding tenure positions.
Weah claimed that during his presidency, he upheld the integrity of tenure positions, stating, “We have to respect the laws of the Republic.”
Weah, who lost the 2023 presidential election, accused Boakai’s government of removing officials from their tenure because of their affiliations with the opposition party, which Weah now leads.
In a telephone conversation with Freedom Radio Liberia on June 28, 2024, Weah urged the current administration to emulate his approach to tenure positions.
However, Boakai’s administration has consistently refuted such claims, often echoed by members of Weah’s party and political commentators.
DUBAWA, therefore, decided to investigate the ex-president’s claim as part of its mandate to fact-check to discourage controversies.
Verification
Weah’s tenure position policy came under scrutiny early in his presidency. One of his initial legislative acts was to propose the cancellation of all tenure positions within the executive branch.
In 2018, he introduced a bill titled “An Act Prohibiting the Tenure of Public Officials Within the Executive Branch of Government” passed and forwarded to the Liberian Senate for concurrence.
Despite the bill being under legislative consideration, Weah faced criticism for appointing officials to positions traditionally protected by tenure.
For instance, he appointed a new head to the Secretariat of the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI), traditionally a tenure position.
Additionally, his appointment as a new official to the International Maritime Organization led to a legal challenge from the incumbent, Atty Isaac Jackson, who sought the Supreme Court’s intervention.
The Supreme Court, however, denied Atty Jackson’s petition for a prohibition on his removal. The decision gives the government the upper hand to remove him as Liberia’s Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization.
Conclusion
Contrary to Weah’s claims, his administration did not respect tenure positions. Therefore, his recent assertion in a local radio interview is misleading.
