The Minister of Information, Laurence Bropleh, has been suspended. I’m pretty sure Bropleh has been with Sirleaf since she was elected, and I’ve always thought he handled his responsibilities more than competently. And remarkably I’ve never read anything bad about him in the papers. But there are now allegations that he put on the payroll ghost media employees at Liberians embassies, amounting to perhaps $300,000 in salary that didn’t go to the people named on the payroll.
What does this mean? Many senior officials in Sirleaf’s government have been charged with corruption over the past year. Is her government especially corrupt, or is she doing a better-than-average job of dealing with corrupt officials?
I have heard before of ghost employees being a problem.
On the other hand, knowing Liberian politics, maybe this is the new, clean way to get rid of a minister non grata?