Monday, September 5, 2011

Winston Tubman and his Congress for Democratic Change


By ralph geeplay

                  
                     Tubman and Weah feel off the crowd in Monrovia


Winston Tubman and his Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) are showing their true colors as national elections approaches. They are showing the Liberian people the other side of the coin. That coin being the violent bearing with which its partisans have behaved constantly since 2005, resulting to violence every opportunity that arises to express their displeasure with the body politics of which they are part. This certainly, is a tell tale says analysts that they will not accept anything short of electoral victory when the presidential and legislative elections result are announced later this year by the National Elections Commission of Liberia.



By all indications, it seems that Tubman is weak in the face of the prevailing circumstances that currently engulfed his party. A country such as Liberia emerging out of a despicable war needs a sturdy leader. He is quiet in the face of adversity.

He is the head, and the buck stops with the him. It is no secret that the CDC has always relished and predisposed a vulgar political disposition, and with Tubman coming on board, a semblance of order many thought would have been established.

Given that he was the United Nation’s special representative to Somalia, his leadership skills should at this crucial moment not be in doubt. How can a man who was assigned to Somalia post Mohamed Siad Barre in the face of menace, not able to control his own party..? What would happen if he ascended to the presidency and the nation was overwhelm with crisis? There is infighting within the CDC also even amongst its leaders.

Amusingly, Both Senator Geraldine Doe Sheriff and Mr. Acarus Gray have defied Tubman and Weah to resign their top party posts as they run for legislative seats. Tubman it seems is a lame duck in the party he leads.

In its quest to make noise and established its true identity, the CDC partisans have spare not even its TOP leadership. “It appears the ire and dissents from Bensonville have spilled over to Monrovia,” commented the Analyst Newspaper, in the wake of the party primaries for legislative seats.
CDC Chair: Senator Sheriff


The paper went on, “Yesterday, the melodrama took place at the party's headquarters where some aggrieve partisans of the CDC moved on Chairman Geraldine Doe Sheriff and the National Chairman for mobilization Mulbah Morlu [as they were] brutalized... Secretary General Acarus Gray was lucky; he quickly took to his heels and escaped the furors of the disgruntled partisans,” concluded the daily in its August 15, 2011 edition.

As the hostage taking situation was buzzing and making news around the country and in the international community, considering the CDC is the so-called largest political party in the country and could assume the mantle of state if it defeats the ruling Unity Party (UP) during these up coming elections, a petrol bomb went off in the yard of Lenn Eugene Nagbe. Nagbe is the former chairman of the Congress Party who switched party loyalty to the ruling UP recently.

He was fortunate his home and family lives were spared, but not his 2011 Hyundai. Accordingly, accusing fingers went to the CDC again, whose partisans had earlier accused Nagbe of being disloyal. Montserrado County Representative Edwin Snowe laid the blame at the doors of the CDC, a claimed that has not been denied.

Tubman, in his drive to score political points and paint the UP as insensitive have said, “You should pull with us, so that in the first round, we can say good bye to a government that brought us nothing but grief and disaster,” the gleeful candidate told thousands when he and Weah were welcome to Monrovia a month ago.

He spoke at the ceremony when the former 1995 world player of the year presented his college degree to their partisans in Monrovia. Since 2005 Weah have been studying in the United States to earn his papers and therefore removed the stigma that he was not educated enough to lead the country. The crowd was huge.

Tubman had cause for celebration. From all indications it appears that even with the CDC not yet holding on to state power “grief and disaster,’ has characterized its politicking and posture.

The most appalling of all these scenarios is the huge silence that has attended the Congress Party leadership in the wake of these developments.

You would think Mr. Tubman, long ago would have quickly organized a press conference the morning after his national chairwoman, Doe-Sheriff and his national mobilization chief, Morlu were brutalized and offer apologies to the Liberian people and his own party for the hostility his partisans are trying to inject into our national politics.

Hell yeah, there is cause to worry! Wasn’t Liberia the sole nation responsible for the military adventurism of Charles Taylor and the destabilization of the Mano River Basin, whose National Patriotic party (NPP) is now part of the CDC?
CDC partisan ransack party headquarters


Don’t we live close to the Ivory Coast where electoral violence there recently sent almost 200,000 Ivorians to our own shores as we reeled from our violent calamity that left our country crippled with almost 300,000 dead?

A major underlying cause of our war is a direct result of the botched 1985 General and Presidential Elections also, that was rigged and violent with the ruling National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL), its chairman Kekura Kpoto and the NDPL Youth Wing brutalizing peaceful citizens and the opposition.

Neither has George Weah nor the party’s eloquent spokesman Mr. Samuel D. Tweah Jr. offered any apologies as well. But come to think of this: you would also assume the Liberian political opposition, namely Charles Walter Brumskine and Dew Mason would have scored some political points by criticizing the CDC. They have not!

Incase they do not know this: the CDC is also their chief political rival, but more so, as political leaders who claimed to have the country at heart they should have looked the CDC in the eye and told the truth, that “Continuous Violent behavior by political hoodlums might lead to violent elections that have the propensity of putting this country back to where we have graduated...” Said the Monrovia based Inquirer newspaper.

The paper said it was calling, ‘on all well -meaning individuals within Liberia's borders to condemn these acts because it is an open secret that violence begot violence, a situation we as a people cannot accept in keeping Liberia stable.” It editorialized on the 19th of August of this year.

These are times for sober reflections. Liberians in general must not allow the quest and ambition of anyone to supersede the general good of the nation.

In its objectives to capture state power the CDC partisans have been negligent and irresponsible! They beat up a FrontPage Africa reporter and damaged his equipment immaturely in Monrovia weeks ago. It was grossly unfair also, when it’s partisans in Buchanan chased the United Nations Development Officer Mr. Patrick Sawyer and damage his car. So too, was it wrong that it’s partisans torn down a National Elections Commission’s poster in Grand Kru County, simply because according to them, the party leaders instructed them to do so during the just concluded referendum .

The Liberian voters must be aware of the CDC. Its behavior is disheartening to say the least. Liberia as the oldest independent African country with a history of oppressing its own people can not afford to repeat its past. It must now, in a new epoch lead the way and build a credible political leadership on the continent wherein its elections and political institutions are seen as clean and therefore a motivation for other African states to emulate.

Winston Tubman and his Congress Party must be ashamed of themselves for their cowardly acts. Usually, in other African countries it is the ruling party that typically introduced violence as it intimidates the political opposition. Not in this case.

Let us not be fooled, Liberia must make progress, and it is time we began giving the CDC a second look. To me, it appears they are not ready to lead Liberians into the future fill with hope, because as Gandhi said, “I object to violence because [even] when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” That in essence has been our history too; the violence we introduce yesterday is still with us today. We must therefore do all we can to guard against it.

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