Monrovia-In a scathing opinion editorial titled “FROM WHERE I SIT,” Liberian writer Philipbert Semogai Jabba-Wleh Browne has argued that former President George Manneh Weah lost the 2023 elections because his administration failed to counter what he calls “six lies” spun by the opposition in the court of public opinion.
Browne anchors his piece on two legal maxims, including “No one will do for you what you ought to do for yourself” and “It is not who is right or wrong but how you plead your case.”
He writes that despite having the resources of the state, the CDC government “stood helplessly by while it was destroyed.”
Browne lists six controversies that dogged the Weah administration from 2020-2021, which he claims were distorted and never effectively rebutted.
Among them, he highlighted the deaths of LRA staff Gifty Lama and Albert Peters whose remains were found in a parked vehicle near UBA Bank on Broad Street on October 2, 2020.
Browne notes President Weah asked the U.S. Embassy to help with investigations but the government never released a conclusive forensic report, allowing opposition voices to frame it as state-sponsored killing of auditors.
He claims Stanton Witherspoon confessed on Spoon Talk in December 2025 that false narratives were promoted for political reasons.
He also recalled the death of Internal Auditor Emmanuel Barten Nyeswua at his home on SKD Boulevard after allegedly falling from a top floor around 3 a.m. on October 10, 2020.
Browne cites family claims that the 9 to 12-foot balcony was too low for a fatal fall and that his phones and laptop disappeared. The case was reopened as a cold case in July 2024 by Police IG Gregory Coleman, but nothing has been heard up to now.
He similarly captured the death of EPS agent Melvin Earley who was shot in Tappita, Nimba County on February 19, 2021, during President Weah’s county tour.
The EPS account said he shot himself three times, but Browne cites his widow, Ravinna Earley, who is now in the U.S., as alleging she was offered $10,000 to say it was suicide. The incident remains disputed.
The issue of the three missing boys and St. Moses Funeral Parlor is one that helped to break camel back.
Robert Blamo Jr., 29, Siafa Boimah, 34, and Bobby Gbeanquoi, 32, hired to work at a mining site in Bong County in October 2020 went missing in thin air, and police said in March 2021 they drowned when a canoe capsized.
Browne says families rejected that account, fueling social media rumors, which he calls sensational and evil lies, that the boys were killed for ritual purposes to harvest kidneys for President Weah, who was falsely alleged to be sick.
According to him, the CDC dismissed the reports as false but failed to produce bodies or independent autopsies.
Another issue has to do with ABC property apartments for which President Weah was accused of using public funds to build 48 apartments on the RIA Highway.
He cites reports claiming it was actually 17 apartment buildings plus a church and theater, built in 2018, but the government never produced title deeds or asset declarations to counter the allegation.
Another issue centered around the L$16 billion saga, which Browne himself reported in his newspaper at the time.
Browne said the CBL broker reported L$16 billion brought in and missing, and that a panel led by former Police IG Patrick Sudue was formed.
He notes Kroll Associates found systemic weaknesses and that $16.5 million remained unaccounted for, with contracts signed in 2016 before legislative approval.
He claims the investigation stalled because funds in question had political implications.
According to Browne, the CDC government allowed the Unity Party, then in opposition, to “chew them raw and destroy them,” proving that in law and politics, if you do not plead your own cause, your enemy will plead it for you.
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