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Suspending the Information Minister, Laurence Bropleh was the right thing to do. It sends a stern message to future lawbreakers that there is a harsh cost to lawlessness. The decision was sensible because a tainted presidential spokesperson smears the message and diminishes its value. However, letting the now former Minister of Information/Cultural Affairs and Tourism (MICAT) go presents an enormous opportunity for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to get rid of a relic of the past – a propaganda arm - MICAT. Several other nations still maintain information ministries, but that is not what renders this infrastructure archaic. Significant changes in information technology as well as shifts in the culture of proactive public engagement for results are drivers.
For most of its existence, MICAT has been used for government news and press censorship as well as publicity at home (intergovernmental information sharing) and abroad (diplomacy). It was the critical component of despotic politics especially during the repressive eras under Presidents Tubman, Tolbert, Doe and Taylor. Even in the post-war era under President Sirleaf there has been reluctance to give up this predominant propaganda making function. There has been a sort of adversarial posture between MICAT and the independent PRESS, with interludes of collaboration.
Like so many ministries, MICAT deserves to be on the chopping block because it contributes to a bloated and ineffective public sector. Instead of merely doing an audit of the financial books of the ministry, the entire organizational landscape should be reviewed for the value that it adds to governance and public service delivery. The present structure of having a ministry of information with a full slate of deputy and assistant ministers, coupled with directors, comptrollers, accountants, and then press and public affairs personnel coupled with ELBS and its staff (whose board the Minister chairs) and the Executive Mansion and its Press and Public Affairs staff presents overlapping layers of functions that is downright inefficient.
President Sirleaf should use this opportunity to streamline her press and public affairs apparatuses and build a more slender and efficient alternative. Many modern day examples exist from which she can draw. These include closing the entire Ministry of Information and folding it into a Department of Communications at the Executive Mansion overseen by a Deputy Minister of Presidential Affairs for Communications or a Presidential Council on Communications. That portfolio would include all the presidential spokespersons, speechwriters, press aides, and focus on message making for a new era. She needs a press team that is focused on engaging the Liberian and foreign publics while also crafting her speeches and interactions with society in ways that inform the world about progress and challenges. In an age of new media – the Internet, social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, and others, including webinars and 24-hour news channels, democratic governance in Liberia must catch up with the times.
Not only does she need to streamline her press and public affairs personnel, but she also needs to restructure the delivery systems and the message content. The focus of information delivery from the government should be development-oriented. Hence, the need exists for her to hire communication professionals with expertise in development practice, and many of them, men and women exist of Liberian stock. The nexus between communications and development priorities of the government ought to be the focus of the government’s press and public affairs work. Instead of the current splinter delivery of information to the public with an emphasis mainly on spin-making or political propaganda, the aim of a new delivery system should be to inform, educate, and leverage structural and socioeconomic changes that the government is making on a day-to-day basis. The message should be presented in a structured and cohesive manner rather than the sporadic and ad hoc process that allows each minister to be their own spokesman.
The latter practice has left the government vulnerable to loopholes and inconsistencies in its messaging. A synergy ought to be established between policy making and informing the public about such changes to enable greater awareness as well as buy-in. In the last three and half years, there has been no order in how information has been delivered via the press and public affairs infrastructure of the government. A bloated bureaucracy has been maintained with no valid indicators or benchmarks for measuring outcomes. Cost effectiveness has not been the guiding feature of governance. President Sirleaf has maintained old institutions that were probably out of vogue in the 1980s or 1990s.
ELBS and every other government-run communication system should be reviewed for relevance to the mission of engaging and sustaining the support of the public in transforming the society. And if propaganda making is the only value that each entity adds to the milieu, they should be immediately shut down. The main purpose of any information dissemination effort in a democracy by the government should be to serve as the lynchpin of socioeconomic development. The old Rural Communications Network and the philosophy which underpinned it (outreach to underserved populations with a social development message) should be infused broadly into ELBS. ELBS should serve as the mechanism for public education around the social determinants (the underlying causes of various social problems and how they mutually reinforce the other) of physical health, education, mental health, crime, nutrition, etc.
Hanging over President Sirleaf’s head is a destructive phenomenon that continues to hold her government hostage from accelerating the kinds of transformation that are necessary in this post-war era. She is being underserved not by her under men and women, but by a desire of those around her, if not herself to build a “group think” (people who are bred from a politically loyal tree) and not professionals whose loyalty is to the state. That cycle of weeding out professionals who are bent on maintaining their independence and serving as catalysts for ending mediocrity remains the President’s most daunting Achilles heel.
The end of her term and the beginning of a new election cycle makes it even harder for President Sirleaf to be bold when political calculus is in full swing seeking to ensure maintenance of the existing order of the day. Noteworthy though is the strong correlation between the president’s hiring practices and the poor outcomes that we have seen in the last three and half years, which the outgoing Minister of Information and his ilk represent. Innovation has been stymied principally because new and progressive thoughts have not been embedded into her governance paradigm.
By reducing the size of the government in the form of restructuring MICAT, a vibrant private media culture could be set into motion. Professionals will build new private media outlets and use their talent to strengthen the fourth estate. Nothing is more foundational to an emerging democracy than a flooded stream of private and independent media houses. It will take a strong political will to make such a significant change in elections season, but certainly, if the best interest of the public lies at the heart of this decision, the political costs should not matter. Gutsy choice, but long overdue!
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