Liberian President George Weah has informed the Senate that he plans to spend nine days in Qatar in order to attend the World Cup, in which his son Timothy Weah will participate in the U.S. national team.
Weah, who was an acclaimed footballer and considered one of the greatest players of all time to come out of the African continent, left the country last week on several official visits, although he has not revealed the full extent of his plans, reports the BBC.
President of Liberia since 2017, the news that he will be out of the country from next November 20, the date on which the opening match of the competition takes place, has not pleased a part of society, which reproaches him for being absent from his functions while Liberia is struggling with an unprecedented food crisis.
The media have criticized the fact that the former Chelsea and Milan player, among others, is on a seven-week tour that will take him not only to Qatar but also to Morocco and Ghana, with taxpayers’ money, while the country is in the midst of an economic crisis.
Thus, they have rejected that such trips will produce «huge dividends» for the country as the government says and have recalled other controversial stays abroad for its duration, as when he went in September to New York to attend the last General Assembly of the United Nations.
«There is no precedent for a head of state, president and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia leaving office for almost two months at taxpayers’ expense. That amounts to a gross abuse of the presidential oath,» the newspaper ‘The New Dawn’ has denounced in an editorial.
