By Frank Sainworla, Jr. fsainworla@yahoo.com
The CDC-led government is committed to ensuring “200%” free speech and the press is not enemy of the government, Liberia’s President George Weah has told a meeting with media executives and officials of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) at his Foreign Ministry’s office in Monrovia.
The Executive Mansion, which requested the meeting on Wednesday, said it was intended to develop common understanding on how the media and government can partner to move the country forward.
It came amidst growing tensions in relations between the Liberian media and the over two-month-old administration of President George Weah, whose utterance on March 22, 2018 that Journalist Jonathan Paye-Layleh was always against him during the civil conflict while he (Weah) was championing human rights sparked serious concerns.
That utterance and subsequent threats from some elements around the President later prompted Paye-Layleh to flee Liberia and is now in the US.
Wednesday’s meeting was also held against the backdrop of this week’s brief closure and arrest of Rodney Sieh’s FrontpageAfrica (FPA) staffers in a US$1.8 million defamation civil law with attachment. It also followed a string of verbal attacks and threats of the paper for various investigative stories it has recently done critical of the Weah government.
President Weah, flanked by his Legal Adviser Archie Bernard and National Security Advisor Benjamin Karmoh, tried to alley growing fears by the independent media of moves by some officials to engage in witch-hunt, vowing not to go after any Journalist for what they report.
But he at the same time strongly defended his claim that Journalist Paye-Layleh was against him during the country’s civil war and in fact repeated what his Information Minister Eugene Nagbe had earlier that there is evidence that the BBC Reporter used to work with the NPFL propaganda machine.
But a former top NPFL executive and later NPP Senator from Grand Cape Mount County, Abel Massalley has rubbished allegations that Journalist Paye-Layleh was a member of the NPFL propaganda machine during the civil war.
The NPFL is the defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia rebel group, which later metamorphosed into the National Patriotic Party (NPP) led by now jailed former President Charles Taylor.
NPP went into a tripartite coalition with President George Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change to form the Coalition for Democratic (CDC) that won the 2017 presidential election.
Massalley, an Israeli-trained security, clarified that Paye-Layleh only found himself in the NPFL-controlled territory during the 1990s but functioned as an independent Journalist throughout the war.
“He was in the NPFL territory as a BBC Stringer. He was never involved in any NPFL Propaganda or information machine. Jonathan Paye-Layleh was the only Reporter who was brave enough to cover the frontline. Sometimes they (rebel fighters) used to threaten him but he used his knowledge of the local language to his advantage. And his reports covered what he saw and it was the reality,” the former NPFL executive said.
But during Wednesday’s meeting with the media, President Weah insisted: “Í’ve got nothing against Paye-Layleh but I just reminded Paye-Layleh of his past. He asked me a critical question and I gave him a critical answer” the Liberia leader said.
President Weah said he has documents to show that the BBC Liberian Journalist was undermining disarmament and perpetrating the carnage when he (Weah) was advocating for peace and human rights in the country.
According to him, he has done nothing wrong that would trigger fear in Paye-Layleh to flee to America and called on him to return home adding that his safety is guaranteed.
“Where did I go wrong? Did I threaten him? Did I send security to his home? No one chasing him (Paye-Layleh,” said President Weah.
On the situation with the FPA, the Liberian Chief Executive said that it is a private lawsuit against the paper and that his government was not behind it.
Describing Paye-Layleh and FPA’s Publisher Rodney Sieh as his personal friends, Weah emphasized that “I am not against the press and can never be against the press.”
President Weah alleged that during the recent 2017 elections, his CDC gave FPA US$10,000 to run stories for the party but the stories were not given prominence.
At one stage, the 51-year-old Liberian leader sounded as the adage goes, “if you can fight them, join them” while addressing the concerns about government supporting local media development by giving them ads and paying their arrears.
According to him, ‘if the media want government to do business with them, they can work with government.’
The President also spoke to the mounting concerns in media cycles about an avalenge of attacks and at time hate messages against the media by some officials and Weah supporters on air and on the Social Media platforms.
He said he had no control over what his supporters write against his critics on Facebook, because it is an open platform and very difficult to regulate.
“Perhaps we need to manage Facebook,” President Weah indicated.