Finance Ministry Protests ‘Inciting Report’

5 August 2011

The Finance Ministry in Monrovia has filed a formal complaint with the Grievance and Ethics Committee of the Press Union of Liberia against reporter Julius Kanubah of the FrontPageAfrica newspaper for reportage that it considered inciting.

A Ministry of Finance press statement issued yesterday said journalist Kanubah reported, Wednesday this week, under the headline, “45M BUDGETARY DISCOVERY: Was Executive shielding millions for electioneering?” that National Legislature has “uncovered forty-five million United States dollars as part of the ongoing Legislative review of the 2011-2012 draft National budget.”

Describing the report as “untrue, unsubstantiated, and falls short of the basic journalistic principles of balanced and objective reporting of fact” the statement said he published the story even though he conceded that the details of the discovery were “unclear” and failed to contact the Finance Ministry for clarification.

“In the first place the Legislature did not discover any new money as erroneously reported by Julius Kanubah and the FrontPage Africa,” the ministry said.

It said what happened was that two months before the start of the fiscal year on July 1, the Executive Branch, through the Office of the President, presented a draft FY2011/2012 budget for US $459,906,000.

In the interim, the statement said, the ministry monitored the projections and assumptions for all the revenue sources comprising the draft budget and accordingly updated them by more than US $45.0 million based on increases in the estimates. It said the monitoring was “a standard practice”.

The statement, which was issued by the Media Services and Public Affairs Unit of the Ministry of Finance, said the adjustments and updates were reflected in the core revenue, estimated cash carried forward, and contingent revenue components of the budget.

Besides reporting that the National Legislature has discovered a hidden allocation, the statement said, Mr. Kanubah claimed that President Sirleaf did not talk about salary increment for civil servants in her budget message.

“This assertion is false and intended to incite public sentiments against the Government,” the ministry said, citing a subsection of the president’s message titled, Compensation of Public as stating explicitly that government was considering increasing salaries.

‘I am pleased to inform you, Mr. Speaker and Honorable Members of the Legislature, that in FY2011/2012, we make further increments to the salaries of teachers, health workers and members of the security forces,’ the statement quoted the president as reporting.

Since the delivery of that message to the nation, the statement said, the Ministry of Finance has been repeating it the Liberian people through the mass media – radio, newspaper, TV, and intra-officer memos.

“Just recently, during the time leading to and after the 2011 Independence Day celebrations, staff of the Ministry of Finance carried out a massive public information campaign on the budget, including proposed salary increment for all civil servants in Montserrado, Margibi, Bong, Lofa, Nimba and Grand Bassa Counties,” the statement said.

It then wondered why the FrontPageAfrica reporter decided to “misinform the Liberian people in this manner”.

Noting that the FrontPageAfrica story has “wide ranging national and international implications”, the statement reporter Kanuba might have acted the way he did out of ignorance, might have planned to distort the facts, or might have chosen to become unnecessarily sensational.

Irrespective of what drove Kanuba’s motive, the statement said, the fact remained that his story poses “potential danger to the lives of officials and employees of the Ministry of Finance”.

The statement did not say how that was so, but it noted that the story was most likely to create “discontent and unrest among some members of the society”.

It was in an effort to diffuse the likely discontent and set the record straight about government’s commitment to the welfare of the Liberian people, the statement said, that the ministry has decided to “expose the shortcomings of the story”.

“Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance is lodging a formal complaint against journalist Julius Kanubah before the Grievance and Ethics Committee of the Press Union of Liberia,” the statement said.

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