What Distinguishes Liberia’s Political Parties – Just Faces?

I am encouraged by the tremendous responses to my inquiry about Liberia’s 2012 presidential contenders. I sensed that we may not have any presidential hopefuls showing early signs of contesting the 2012 elections because that may force them through an early vetting process. But we can smoke them out early or be convinced that they are not up to the task and find something else to do. Those who run for the presidency must no longer be left to whoever had worked outside the country long enough to save up some money to put together a little crowd that will start referring to them as “His/Her Excellency” even before campaigns are officially open. The need to beef up our electoral campaign process is essential more than ever before. After closely following a successful US presidential run, we cannot help but to get involved to improve our processes.

Right now, we cannot distinguish our political parties based on any ideological differences. Does the New Deal have a different way she thinks government should run that is fundamentally different from what ADP believes? What is CDC’s stand on dual citizenship or the tax system, having a new national flag, creating wealth or caring for the elderly? Do people consider these positions before joining a political party or is such decision based on whoever the standard bearer is? Does anyone know or we’re not there yet? Anytime I look back, I can’t pinpoint any major difference between, for example, LPP and UPP besides the different human faces of Tipoteh/Saywer and Baccus representing those parties. I cannot put a finger on what the NPP believes as opposed to the beliefs of LAP, NDPL or COTOL. All that is identifiable are the images of NPP = Taylor or NDPL = Doe/Krahn people. And that’s it?

In Liberia, we clearly see political parties that are tied around individuals, either their founders or presidential candidates. Instead of having political parties producing candidates, we have presidential hopefuls producing political parties. As a result of this back to front arrangement, we have individuals coming to power (and not teams) who spend the rest of their terms recruiting and figuring out who they can work with. Imagine our current president ran and won on a party she was never part of because by the time she declared her intentions, her party already had a presidential candidate. When she became president, she started with people she remembered working in government some 30 years prior, some whose whereabouts she might have not known. Slowly she became disenchanted with some and then turned to total strangers and some young people who would only see a grand mother figure that they may be embarrassed to question. Prince Johnson, after losing in the primary election of his party, took flight and won on an independent ticket. Although this is not out of the ordinary but it leaves one to wonder if those political parties mean anything except for formality.

I believe if we start to discuss elections 2012 in that line now, we may force political parties to take more concrete positions on issues that the electorates care about. We can expect to have a more substantive debate about issues rather than individual differences as we have seen in past elections. In so doing, we will also stop the mushrooming of political parties formed by individuals in desperate search of vehicles to transport them to the presidency. Take it from me, if a presidential hopeful does not have a position different from that of an existing party, he or she will be forced to join one party and compete for the presidency in the primary, go independent or form a new party and risk being irrelevant in the eyes of voters. It is time we put a higher price tag on presidential candidacy by bringing these issues to the forefront so as to frustrate any overly ambitious, unprepared and unprincipled flyby hustler wasting our time or eventually passing through the cracks to become our president or compromised cabinet minister in a so-called government of inclusion.

Why Kenya and Not Liberia

In the midst of all the jubilation for the Obama victory shouting “we did it,” a concern sprout up amongst us coming from a female voice “we didn’t do it; Kenya did it.” In clear words she lamented “It’s a shame that Kenya was the one to give America their first black president, what a shame, Liberia should have been the one to do this a long time ago.” On the surface, she looks like a loner who is only struggling to ruin our celebrations or like a jealous woman spewing hate at a competitor’s success. As immigrants from Liberia (and I believe all descendants of African) we were in our seventh heaven witnessing the history that was made and how the political, social landscape in the US has changed forever and so a harsh off-the cuff reaction to her assertion would be justifiably understandable. And why not a rough repudiation for not seeing the big picture? Even Rev. Jesse Jackson who once covertly threatened to cut off Obama’s private for “talking down on black people” broke down in tears of joy. Everyone seems to be on board, so where was this lady coming from with this wierd Liberia-Kenya comparison while emotions were still high? But I believe, if we must all share in the Obama victory, we must be prepared to tolerate disenting views and prop what this historic moment underscores –a new era of cooperation between what is and what is not; what was and what is to come; what we share and what we differ on. With that in mind, I believe such thinking was not entirely out of place or untimely and I am constrained to scribble a sober response.

I recognize that such feeling of “why not Liberia” is hard to address without first understanding what such suppose to mean. Why should it be Liberia? Second, it is impossible to draw those parallels between Kenya and Liberia without also understanding all the historical, economic, and political details about those two countries that make them similar or set them apart. I am not certain if this lady has analyzed the history of both Kenya and Liberia and taken into considerations those factors that may likely be responsible for “Kenya’s success.” It is important to understand what have been the parallels between Kenya and Liberia and how those social, political, and economic realities compare in both Liberia Kenya. Without comparing and contrasting those factors in the two countries, we will only be relying on guts feeling and guess work. But for the sake of argument, let’s consider a few. Obama’s father, as we all know, came to the USA on a scholarship to attend Harvard University. For Liberia, we need to find out who are those that have been benefitting from opportunities to study abroad. Minds quickly run to undeserving beneficiaries with ties to gatekeepers and other decisions makers. For there to be a President Barack, a brilliant economistcalled Barack Sr. must have gone to Harvard and not some mistress benefitting who would never step foot on the school campus. Unlike Kenya, Liberia has had a step child-step father relationship with the USA. Maybe that could play a role.

The way I see it, it couldn’t be Liberia, at least not just yet. While I don’t claim any absolute knowledge on the subject or know the progress Liberians and those Americans of Liberian descent are making here in the USA, I can point to reasons why I believe Liberia has a long shot to what Kenya has done. First and foremost, as old as we ware as a country, it seems to be as if we are just beginning. Up till now, we have not been able to establish our own identity. Unfortunately, we adapt to whatever way others define or label us. We tend to admire every foreign trait and scramble to copy whatever will make us look like other people. This is a chronic problem that makes it hard for us to move ahead with the speed that is required for a major leap. For Obama to win, he had to be the best. His campaign was extraordinarily out of this world. He did everything better than all his competitors. That raises the question about our copy cat ideology. How is it possible to stand out, beat, top, win or do better than someone you are trying to copy or model your life after? Not normally an easy thing to accomplish.

We Liberians don’t seem to take much pride in our country or its people that much. I don’t want to put the blame on our purported founders and first leaders who saw themselves as coming from another place and saw Liberia as a settlement or temporary dwelling where they don’t have much to lose if it was broken down. That line of thought and belief tend to drive the way we all looked at our own country as less than adequate. I have lived my war years in a number of West African countries before migrating to the USA. One striking difference I found was how other peoples took pride in their countries, their cultures and languages unlike us. In Guinea, the pride words were “this is Guinea, not Liberia” to stress that their country was a place of laws. In Ivory Coast, they proudly referred to their capital city as “petit Paris” or little Paris. Ghanaians say “we are the best in the whole wide world,” and the Nigerians bask “a country as great as Nigeria….” It is needless to mention how America thinks of herself as “the World.” When it comes to Liberia, I don’t see that pride coming out. In areas where we think good our selves, such pride only comes with our association with other nations thinking that our completeness lies in another persons or nations. Evidently we boasted of being the 51st state of the USA; we bragged about the use of the US dollar, how much we wished to be like other peoples like for example, how our footballers are like top Ghanaian or Brazilian soccer stars! We often have some demeaning stereotype of each of the 17 ethnic groups. So if none of the parts (tribes) making up the whole are no good, it is impossible that the whole (Liberia) be of any good. See my point? Values that we seem to have consensus on as unique Liberian values are the negative ones like “Liberian people don’t respect time.” Amongst us, “a typical Liberian man” characterizes infidelity and spousal abuse. These are examples of how we look at ourselves and if that doesn’t change, we may have a long way in producing an Oprah Winfred or a Barack Obama. Of course, your house must sell you before the street buys you.

It is true statement that if we don’t appreciate where we are coming from, we may never get where we want to be. In our vain effort to put away who we truly are in exchange of foreign cultures, we have nothing to use a backdrop against which to compete and learn new things. Some time ago, we were made to believe some of our intrinsic values and traits as a people as undesirable and exalted or strove to emulate those ones that we were tricked to adopt. Strangely enough, we oddly measure civilization, progress, and intelligence using standards that continue to pull us back up to day. You will agree that even in this 21st century, we continue to use those standards or traces of those awkward criteria. Living, schooling or working in a foreign country no matter the kind of work or quality of education were priced so highly. You will agree that as late as the 2005 elections, the major difference that set our candidates apart was which of them had the best foreign travel, work or schooling experience or who other countries would prefer. It was never about us because from the old days, anything Liberian was not credible or good enough. And how can we move forward with a thought that speaking the language God gave us was a show of backwardness or illiteracy? Back then, even the food we ate was a demonstration of how civilized or uncivilized we were thought to be. Pusawa not country rice was the way to go; apples were better than oranges or the social scale; we would publicly eat bread with mayonnaise and soft drink but wouldn’t want to be seen eating GB and soup with GB medicine. O how much we struggled to adapt “civilized” names that we even could not pronounce correctly! Or how much we adjusted “country” names to satisfy the taste of strangers and others whose lifestyles we were suppose to copy! Taking after other peoples without presenting ourselves as having anything worth copying disarmed us of our competitive spirit and made others to despise us. I can’t imagine how much proud and coveted we would have been if peoples from other nations were learning Kisi, Grebo, or Mende or flocking to Liberia to attend Poro classes or learn how to play sankpa or sasa or dance waya.

We can uniquely identify how Ghanaians, Sierra Leoneans, or Nigerians call certain words. But know how others do it but never how we do it as Liberians. Anytime I asked my teachers how to pronounce certain words, he presented to me how the British call it and how the Americans call it. He would go further on how Sierra Leoneans or Nigerians took after the British but when it came to us, I was never told a clear way for us. Some went one way, while others went the other way or no where at all. That is why I was happy when President Sirleaf finally resolved that her government needs to decide on a system to deal with corruption. If we are now putting mechanisms into place in this late age, you will agree that we have some work to do.

All along, we have been scrambling all over the place but Kenyans and other African countries have found a path to take. Since the good results we are seeing today do not just happen in the blue, we as Liberians need to establish ourselves now as a people if we must have our own Obama. Kenya did it and Liberia can do it too but Liberia must put in the time and work Kenya put.

What a UN Truck Means to Me

When I heard on the radio this morning that help has arrived for those affected by the nonsense currently going on in Congo, I could not help but think about the days when the United Nations supply truck meant life or death for me. Even today, a UN truck loaded with relief item is still for me, a symbol of hope in the midst of despair and destitution. It was in the year 1991, in the remote town of Bossou, just two towns or two hours on foot from the mining city of Yekepa, Nimba County. This little town was swollen to bursting point by an influx of Liberian war refugees who felt that it was too risky to stay in the first Guinean town of Thuo for fear of cross border attacks by the Liberian rebels. When the year 1990 ended with president Doe killed, we were hopeful that our nightmare was over. Consequently, during the 1991 New Year celebrations, the Christians in Bossou who had gathered at the Bossou Free Pentecostal Church for the New Year watch night called the passed year nineteen-nothing and were very optimistic that 1991 was going to be the year that peace would return to Liberia and we return to our homes. But we were all wrong. The madness continued and there we sat in Bossou depending on the goodwill of people we have never met. We had reluctantly cleared a vast forest land to begin building make shift structures to put away the UN provided tents which were becoming tattered and the strings eaten away by termites and other living things that were equally hungry and desperate as we were.

Perhaps the UN also thought the war would be over soon and so as we dragged into 1991our food supplies were no longer current. What started as a biweekly food distribution soon began to lapse. It went into monthly and then slowly into every other month. They had told us that the emergency period was over and that we needed to do something to make ends meet. The strongest amongst us took to the bushes to find food; others engaged into all kinds of businesses. Even the oldest form of business was not left off the table. There were those who partnered with local Guineans to make farms, tap palm wine, set traps, and just do anything to survive. Others went back to Liberia to become part of the rebel force since fighters could get what ever they wanted. The rebel leader Mr. Charles Taylor had made it clear that his fighting men were so plenty that even if he could pay them with beach sand, he would still be short in keeping salary current. As such he commanded them to pay themselves with just anything they could find. So refugees including Guineans who wanted a little more heeded to the call. Others made it their business to trade in looted goods which they would bring across the border to sell. Everyone went to his or her own specialty or just learned something new but nothing seemed enough to satisfy the starving bellies and the flashy lifestyles that we were accustomed to. The United Nations food truck was our only hope of getting something down our throats. The vehicles that brought us these food supplies were loaded in the regional capital of Nzerekkore a month in advance and sent to the various counties called prefectures. They would stock them in warehouses in those county seats. So ours were loaded from Lola, the capital city of our prefecture about forty miles north. Regrettably, the more those truck loads change hands from Nzerekore to warehouses in Lola and from Lola to Bossou, the more our supplies were tempered with. They had a saying that no one plays with oil without their fingers becoming oily. So as the trucks drove through those bad roads, there were droplets of oil on almost every finger that came in contact with what suppose to be ours. But no one got inundated with or cared much about the workers “hustling” because as we say in Liberia, “a beggar has no choice” and so what ever reached us was ours. Some one somewhere was doing us a favor and as such we could not lay claim to what was still miles away from us. But mess with a refugee’s ration when it was apportioned and you would find out why April 14, 1979 was termed Tolbert’s mistake (reference to 1979 rice riots).

We waited and waited. Days came and went with only one way to look and that was the road leading to Lola. It was during this time that the line “give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer got the most “amens” more than any line in both the Old and New Testaments combined. We listened for sounds of trucks shifting gears and watched for any white Suzuki jeep bringing in an advance team of Red Cross workers responsible for food distribution. Such wait was a long one that all of us had to painfully live through. Everyone tried to stay alive by doing whatever humanly possible. Some got hurt or sick in finding alternatives. Others died waiting. The tragic death of three adolescent boys who died from eating tubers they dug up in the wild during one of those waiting periods was not unusual. Those we were lucky to remain on their feet have only two words on their mind: supply truck. Even if we were in our deepest sleep, we could tell when the supply trucks entered Bossou. We knew when there was food in the trucks and when they were empty. We could tell even if we were not looking. The trick was simple. Our warehouse sat on a little hill in the Bossou central market. The driver would not change gear when the trucks were empty. So we held our breadths as the truck began climbing. As soon as the gear shifted resulting into a long and loud sound, we would respond with cheers and laughs. If it were in the day, many would start to race to the warehouse just to watch the food being offloaded. Some would sign up to work as warehouse boys for a few extra kilos of rice, beans or liters of oil. As we stood watching the bags of rice, beans, oil, and sometimes can tomatoes and sardines being off loaded and stocked, we felt satisfied as if we were already being fed.

It was at one of those gatherings near the warehouse that a boy, a Ghanaian Liberian whom I only remembered as Diamentee, about 11 years old sang a song that became a true confession of every refugee who believed in God. Although the song was a regular praise song in almost all morning devotions and church services, the line which spoke of the source of our refugee supply went deep into everyone’s soul:

God made everything beautiful, O…..o beautiful
God made every pretty, so very fine
There must be a power, an everlasting power
There must be a God, a God some where

Who makes the sun to shine -
Who makes the night to fall -
Who makes the refugee food to come -
There must be a God, a God some where

God made everything beautiful, O…..o beautiful
God made every pretty, so very fine
There must be a power, an everlasting power
There must be a God, a God some where


Those trucks meant a lot and I know my Congolese brothers and sisters are feeling the same way too. And when the madness is finally over, I hope they can look back just like me and reflect on the days when the UN truck meant the world to them.