Dr. Bropleh cautions Liberians
This year’s National Flag Day Orator Rev. Dr. Laurence Konmla Bropleh, cautions here that if Liberians allow disunity to put them against one another, the consequences would be lack of development, economic growth, education, quality healthcare, and prosperity.
He stresses that disagreements among citizens will only pull the country apart, rather than unite it.
Dr. Bropleh, also current Special Envoy and Advisor to President George Manneh Weah delivered the keynote address at celebration of 175th Flag Day held Wednesday, August 24, at the Centennial Memorial Pavilion on Ashmun Street, Monrovia.
He says If Liberia continues to allow political divisions, religious differences, and other disagreements to continually pull them apart, then the society will be broken.
However, he calls on all citizens, no matter the tribe, religion, political party, age, education, and class to pay allegiance to the national ensign, the Flag of the Republic of Liberia, which has the colors: Red, White, and Blue “We [all]belong to one nation”, Dr. Bropleh adds.
According to him, the true thrust of the flag is a symbolistic and symbiotic – mutualism, commensalism that reveals the understanding that what affects the country will affect all of the 14 counties and deeply impacts Montserrado County.
“We are in this together, no one is more Liberian than the other, so when we find ourselves awakened to the dawn of a new day, let us strive to peaceably move our nation forward and not backward, upward and not downward by the things we do and say about our nation and each other.”
Dr. Bropleh, also an Attorney-at-Law, and former Minister of |Information from the Sirleaf administration, warns that nobody should pledge allegiance to the Flag based on formality, adding “When we do it, let’s reflect deeply on how far we have come and where we ought to be as Africa’s first independent country.”
“Let’s reflect a bit, putting aside politics, and realize that with unity we can move faster together in the overall interest of our country.”
He encourages Liberians to charge themselves with the responsibility to make patriotic and nationalistic contributions through the political and social decisions made to the promotion of peace and unity.
“Let there be no iota of ambiguity in the expression of the love we must exhibit for our Flag, for it represents our sense of belonging as a people to our nation, Liberia”, he continues.
He says the nation can’t afford to reverse the gains made since the end of two civil wars that brought prolonged suffering and increased the level of illiteracy, poverty, and disease in the society.
He reminds that the protracted civil war caused thousands of lives and properties worth millions of dollars to destroy, and in some cases, looted and vandalized.”
He says the path to inclusion of all in the decision-making process of the country, including a path to availing the country to friendly partners and other nations and investors for economic and infrastructural growth is irreversible.
Dr. Bropleh continues that as the nation celebrates 175th Flag Day, it must be remembered that the flag represents an idea and that it is not just a mere piece of cloth that is intended for decoration.
“As Liberians, our Flag stands as a Lighthouse, steering and guiding each of us to calm shores where our school-going children will be taught in their civic classes the value of the Flag, how it stands for respect and not disrespect, dignity and not inhumanity, love and not hate, reconciliation and peaceful co-existence as a people, that symbiotic guidance that invigorates us to seek the ‘We consciousness’.”
Meanwhile, Each of Liberia’s fifteen counties has a flag, and they share a certain design and aesthetic Figure. The flags for nine of Liberia’s counties were first presented on 29 November 1965 on the occasion of the 70th birthday of President William V. S. Tubman, as a gift from Tubman to the counties; there were only nine counties at the time, later flags were adopted as more counties were created. Editing by Jonathan Browne