Huguette Labelle (HL): You have been in government just under two years now. What have been some of the greatest obstacles to reform?

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (EJS): The greatest obstacles have been our pillars of integrity. These are the constitutional institutions that are responsible for accountability – specifically the judiciary and the general auditing office. Although we may come up with other short term or ad-hoc bodies to address the severity of corruption, they do not hold the primary responsibility.

My government met these institutions in a state of non-functionality. People who had been working there were not well qualified, in some cases, their integrity had been compromised; perhaps because there are low levels of compensation. Because the whole system has bred corruption, it has plagued the entire society.

We are in the process of setting up an anti-corruption commission, to address the problem, and are taking measures to prosecute people when we have evidence they have engaged in corruption.

But when judicial corruption exists, it presents a tremendous roadblock. To put it bluntly, the guilty can bribe; the courts give way to the highest bidder. Efforts are being made to clean this up. We have a new Supreme Court, with very qualified people. We are trying to see how we can make more changes, offer better compensation, offer more training and opportunities, and make changes in personnel and staffing. That has proved to be a big obstacle.

The same applies to the General Auditing Commission, which has not functioned at all in the last few years. The staffing over the years was done by interim governments, largely composed of warring factions.

HL: I don’t know if you have seen our Global Corruption Report for this year, but it focusses on the judiciary. Unless the justice system and the audit office work, you can really have a lack of accountability at the state level.

On a different track, I think it has been great to see the openness your government has shown about the ‘ghost workers’ – people on the payroll of the public service, who do not actually exist, or do not actually work for the government. There have been some quick steps taken to institute some controls, for example the biometric system. When do you think the biometric system will be implemented, and how are the people of your country responding to it?

EJS: The biometric system is now very much on the agenda. The resources to finance it have already been put in this year’s budget, I expect that it will be in place by early next year.

Public reaction is not negative. When we began to undertake a restructuring of the public service – what was seen as ‘downsizing’ – we received a lot of concern and comments from the public because of the high levels of unemployment that exist. But when we began to let them know that 17,000 people were registered as ghost workers, the public began to understand why it was necessary for us to move in this direction. The biometric system will allow us to keep the payroll much more structured and compliant.

HL: Former internally displaced persons and refugees have begun to return to Liberia. Have you already begun to see some of the effects of their return?

EJS: Yes we have. For example, a group of returned refugees from Ghana have benefited from skills training. Groups of market women have receiving training in non-traditional skills, for example, masonry, electrical trade, tailoring, as well as more traditional skills such as sewing and computer skills. Many of these women go on to start their own small businesses and employ others.

HL: That’s great – they are creating employment for themselves and others. Listen, you and I have known Peter Eigen for a long time, and I’ve got a special interest in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), so let me ask you about the Liberian Extractive Industries Initiative (LEITI) – what do you think? Is it going to be difficult to implement?

EJS: Absolutely not. We have already signed on to EITI and we are now taking the requirements to get it started. We created a secretariat in our ministry of finance to carry it out. We also have an EITI Secretariat with representatives from civil society.

HL: It seems like you’ve been hitting the road running on this one.

ESJ: Yes we have. And we have gone one step further, to include our forestry industry, because forestry has been one of the sources of corruption here.

HL: What about diamond mining in Liberia? How far has your government come towards instituting controls on this sector?

EJS: Well, one of the conditions towards the lifting of sanctions on the country was to meet the standards in the Kimberly Process. Liberia is now fully Kimberly-compliant. We have met all the requirements. We now only ship diamonds when we know there has been full compliance at all levels of the chain of command, right down to the importer. This includes the necessary steps of verification, proper transfer, and the proper tracking of public resources.

HL: That is great, because a lot of countries have had to take a very long time to get to the point where you are already.

EJS: What very much helped was the support we received from the US Geological Society, and from South Africa. They helped us to train our people, to set up different institutional arrangements. With that help, we’ve been able to move along at a little bit of a faster pace.

HL: What is interesting is that you came to office with a commitment, but also with knowledge of what is happening around the world, in terms of linking up and getting the kind of assistance you require.

One of the things which struck us here at Transparency International is the amount of positive press your country has received under your leadership. Has this helped to secure more foreign direct investment and private investment in the country’s business sector?

EJS: Absolutely. We have been encouraged by the responses. We started off renegotiating an agreement with Mittal Steel – the number one steel maker in the world – whose contract with the previous government included a lot of concessions for the firm, that my government felt did not properly meet the national interest.

So we started off with that renegotiating, and concluded successfully with more for our government. That operation involves a US $1 billion investment in the re-opening of one of our iron-ore mines. Operations are now starting. We also have new investors coming in, looking at our oil palm industry, our rubber industry or building on existing industries like firestone. Right now we have two proposals to re-open our other iron-ore mines, from 10 well-established, international mining companies.

We are excited. We just have a timing issue. These processes take a while and our people are obviously impatient for the jobs, and the pay raises, these opportunities bring.

Infrastructure has also been a big impediment. We have roads and bridges that have been collapsing around us all around the country, especially now with the heavy rains. This proves very much a challenge for us, and for investors.

The response we’ve gotten to our agenda, to the measures we’ve taken, has just encouraged us tremendously, both from the investor side and the official side.

HL: Natural disasters are so unfortunate, both in human costs and how they push back opportunity. I can also relate to what you say about people’s expectations – the more you are able to show change, the more people want to see its tangible results. But you seem to have been doing just extraordinarily well, in just a short period of time.

Do you have any additional plans over the next two or three years, that you would want to share?

EJS: We want to double our performance on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Liberia is way behind on all of the indicators. Our goal of doubling performance may not get us to reaching the target goals by 2015, but it will make a difference. There has already been a big difference. We now have a 40 percent enrolment in our school system, and most of the increase in enrolment is girls. This is because we have focussed in compulsory primary education.

But I doubt if with all of our best efforts, if we would meet the MDGs by the target year; and I don’t think we will be the only African country. We have done a lot on anti-corruption, but I don’t want to underestimate the challenges ahead…

We also have growth targets. We had negative growth for a while. But during the transition government growth increased to five percent, last year we had over seven percent growth and we will reach nine percent this year and expect to be in double digits next year.

HL: That is so important – the pie has to be bigger to address all of the priorities you talked about.

Thank you again so much for your time and candour. I would like to offer my support as Chair of Transparency International, for your long fight against corruption and my sincerely best wishes for the future.