The shock of an honest president.

last updated 8 January 2015

Liberia

Austin Ejiet

Africa has never seen anything like Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, said Austin Ejiet in the Kampala Monitor. The Harvard-trained Liberian president has been in office an entire year and has yet to establish a Swiss bank account for stashing “humongous sums” of money stolen from the state. Instead, she actually gives leftover money back! When one donor organization gave more money than necessary to refurbish a steel plant, Sirleaf-Johnson’s government refunded the surplus. Even more astounding, she won’t take bribes! That is positively un-African. “If somebody wants a mining concession to prospect for oil or rummage for diamonds in your country and he offers you 10 percent or some other golden handshake, it is bad manners to mount the moral high ground and refuse the offer.” The entire social fabric would unravel. There’s just one explanation possible for Sirleaf-Johnson’s outrageous behavior. She must be “gunning for a Nobel Prize.” If so, she should be warned: The award pays a measly $1 million.