OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT - FrontPageAfrica

New Georgia Township

Monrovia, Liberia

December 1, 2025

H.E. Joseph Nyuma Boakai

President of the Republic of Liberia

Executive Mansion

Monrovia, Liberia

Subject: The Need To Start Holding Direct Public Engagements With the People

Dear Mr. President

As your government enters its third year next month, I respectfully suggest that, moving forward, you make direct public engagements with ordinary people a part of your agenda. Whether it is through town hall meetings in cities or stadium gatherings, this is necessary in order to hear directly from the people themselves.

Gyude Bryant, the head of the transitional government that took Liberia to elections in 2005, once said to me: “One thing I have learnt in the presidency is that, in many ways, it isolates the president from the public and the real people. The president doesn’t get to know or hear what people are actually thinking or saying out there.”

He went on to say: “This is so because some of the people who work in the presidency or are usually allowed by protocol to meet the president either seek their own interests or don’t paint the real pictures of things out there to the president.”

“As a result,” he added, “you sit here thinking all is well out there when, in reality, many things are not fine and need to be fixed.”

Your Excellency, please consider the holding of regular public forums to hear directly from market people, students, the disabled, drivers, nurses, teachers, farmers, shoe-shine boys, sanitation workers, car loaders, roadside sellers and the unemployed.

Those are people who would never get to speak to you if such forums were not organized.

Your government has achieved a lot within a relatively short period of time; but because of the challenges it inherited, expectations are high; and people are saying things that you may not be hearing.

Once these public engagements are organized, and as ordinary people come out one after another to speak, there is a committee of serious people taking serious notes of those concerns and suggestions coming from the public. Those views will then be compiled to inform you about what your people out there are thinking and saying.

Please consider this my patriotic contribution to ensuring the kind of Liberia we wanted to see when we fought very hard to get you elected, even when so many people, many of them now on board, sat on the fence, not so sure your presidency was still possible after losing in 2017. But we were optimistic and challenged the odds for a better Liberia by campaigning with all our might to give you a chance.

Let me close by assuring you, Mr. President, that this communication is also going public. It is going public so that you get the message by all means, even if the original formally submitted to your office takes so long to get on your desk.

Yours truly

Jonathan Paye-Layleh

A Staunch Supporter of the UP-led government