Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Impact

702 Words2 Pages

There are 22 female presidents in the world and one of them is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia, has been leader since 2006 to 2015. Liberia is located in Africa and borders the countries of Sierra leone and Côte D'ivoire. The Natural resources are blood diamonds, oil and timber. It is believed that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has done a lot to improve her country but she has proven to be corrupt in many ways. While appearing to help Liberia’s economy Sirleaf has hurt the people of Liberia by taking away their land, negatively impacting their natural resources, and contributing to a health epidemic. When concerns were announced about her self serving and fraudulent activities she retaliated against Liberians, …show more content…

Her negotiations of land deals have not been for the benefit of Liberia as demonstrated by how she has “...handed over huge tracts of land to foreign investors and dispossessing rural Liberians“ (Siakor and Knight). Ellen “granted more than a third of Liberia’s land to private investors to use for logging, mining and agro industrial enterprises” (Siakor and Knight) which has negatively impacted the citizens of Liberia. When villagers from Grand Cape Mount County met with representatives of Sime Darby regarding concerns about development Ellen interfered and stated “...the Constitution granted the government out... the right to negotiate with foreign investors” (Siakor and Knight). Ellen has demonstrated a pattern of decision making during land deals that have been harmful to her country but beneficial to private investors and …show more content…

"In Liberia critics of the government were often jailed or even executed”. (Rodney Sieh) An example of how citizens were treated during this time is seen in the story of Rodney Sieh. Sieh ran a newspaper called Front Page Africa which published an article exposing corruption in the Liberian government. The story was exposed that the “Agriculture minister was corrupt and instead of prosecuting him Ellen dismissed him quietly from the government” (Rodney Sieh). The agriculture minister retaliated against the newspaper by suing them and the newspaper was fined 1.5 million dollars. When Sieh was unable to pay the fine he was jailed. Instead of addressing the issue of corruption in her government, Sirleaf allowed retaliation towards individuals who attempted to point out these

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