LIBERIA: Liberia's newly installed president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, living up to her reputation as an "Iron Lady", has dismissed all finance ministry employees in a bid to curb the rampant corruption crippling her country.
Facing a herculean task of rebuilding a nation shattered by 14 years of civil war, Africa's first elected female leader said her victory in November's presidential run-off gave her a mandate to clean up Liberia's finances.
"All employees are sacked from their positions until a screening exercise . . . is completed, and those qualified will remain," President Johnson-Sirleaf said during a surprise visit to the ministry on Wednesday.
"Those who are part of financial malpractices and scandals must give way for those who are prepared to do the will of the Liberian people," she told employees.
Endemic corruption was a key cause of Liberia's civil war, which killed 250,000 people and devastated Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed American slaves in 1847.
President Johnson-Sirleaf (67), a Harvard-trained economist, pledged at her inauguration last month to make the war on corruption a top priority. Newspapers across the continent hailed the move.
She has named former World Bank official Antoinette Sayeh as finance minister, with a brief to root out graft and to build bridges with international donors, who have made further aid reliant on weeding out corruption.
With a debt of more than $3 billion (€2.48 billion), the West African nation is reliant on aid from the United Nations, the World Bank, the United States and Europe.
However the risk in dismissing the entire ministry staff is that finances may be paralysed, analysts say. A similar "root-and-branch" approach in the army - where all soldiers were dismissed but could then re-apply - sparked protests.
"This is quite a bold step to take," said Mike McGovern, West African project director with the International Crisis Group. "It is a sign of the seriousness with which she regards the problem."
Liberia was ransacked during the brutal rule of Charles Taylor, who used government revenues to pay for militias whose child soldiers raped and killed. Officials went unpaid, fuelling corruption.
The stakes are high for President Johnson-Sirleaf's two-week- old government. Many people fear that desperate young Liberians could return to arms.
The new government took its first major step towards tackling corruption on Tuesday when it banned members of the previous transitional administration from leaving Liberia until they had undergone a financial audit.
Widespread theft during a two-year interim regime scuppered Liberia's efforts to rebuild after a peace deal signed in 2003. Monrovia is still without state-supplied electricity or water, and many buildings remain derelict.
President Johnson-Sirleaf said all political appointees and members of the transitional government would be removed from their posts.
She has pledged to honour a donor-backed programme - the governance and economic management programme - under which foreign experts will oversee spending.- (Reuters)