Monrovia – When Liberians head to the polls a few weeks from now, there will be no shortage of candidates to choose from.
Rodney D. Sieh, [email protected]
At least twenty political parties are fielding contenders in a race for the presidency and a scramble to succeed the incumbent President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
With this number of candidates, many wonder whether the bar is set too low or whether there is an innate understand that the presidency is an easy route to wealth creation through economic malfeasance.
Better still, are the 14 other candidates not considered major candidates as they were not invited to participate in the most recent presidential debate, only running to secure ministerial posts in a possible second round coalition?
The field this year is two shorter than the October 2005 elections, the first since the end of the civil war which saw field of 22 candidates running for President.
In 2005, a total of 28 candidates had initially filed with the elections commission to contest but six were rejected by the National Elections Commission.
Six year later in 2011, the number dwindled to sixteen candidates, partly attributed to the strength of a financially-strong ruling party running as the incumbent.
But even with the 2011 drop, the burgeoning democratic West African nation, Africa’s oldest republic with a population of 4.6 million leads most countries in the region with much larger populations when it to comes fielding candidates in elections.
Ghana: Population – 28.21 million / 7 candidates -2016
In the 2016 elections which brought former foreign minister Nana Akufo-Addo to power in Ghana, the country of 28.21 million population only had seven candidates running for president but only the top two candidates secured double digits when the ballots were counted: Addo of the New Patriotic Party won with 53.85 to the incumbent John Dramani Mahama with 44.40 percent.
The rest of the candidates in the field barely broke the one percent mark.
Initially, more than sixteen persons filed with the election commission to run for president but 13 were disqualified due to incorrect filing procedures. The disqualified candidates included former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings of the National Democratic Party.
Nigeria: Population – 186 million; 111 candidates – 2015 elections
Not even Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with a population of 186 million, had as many candidates in its 2015 elections which brought Mohammad Buhari to power. Those elections featured eleven candidates and marked the first time an incumbent president lost in a re-election.
Initially, some 26 registered parties registered but only 11 submitted names of candidates to run for the presidency. Of all the 11 candidates, only Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari were candidates in the last election in 2011.
Sierra Leone: Population – 7.396 million / 9 candidates in 2012
The November 17, 2013 elections in neighboring Sierra Leone with a population of 7.3 million, featured only nine political parties as the incumbent Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People’s Congress(APC), went on to win a second term.
Koroma received 58.7% of the vote and his APC also won 67 of the 112 elected seats in Parliament. Only his closest challenger, Julius Maada Bio finished in double digits with 37.4 percent of the votes. Like Nigeria and Ghana, the rest of the field barely made it out of the one percent mark.
Ivory Coast: Population – 23.7 million / 10 candidates – 2015
In La Cote d’Ivoire, where the incumbent Alhassan Ouattarra won a second term with a whopping 83.7%, landslide victory over his nearest rival Affi N’Guessan with 9.3%, ten candidates contested the October 2015 elections but nearly the entire field failed to break out of the one percent mark, except for the Independent canidate Konan Bertin Kouadio who nudged 3.8 percent of the votes.
The Gambia: Population – 2.039 million (2016)/ 3 candidates 2016 elections
The Gambia with a population of a little over two million featured only three candidates in its December 2016 elections that ended the dictatorial rule of Yahya Jammeh.
The opposition candidate Adama Barrow defeated the long-term incumbent, Jammeh, marking the first change of presidency in The Gambia since the 1994 coup which brought Jammeh to power.
The results also marked the first transfer of power by popular elections since independence from the United Kingdom in 1965.
Unlike Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and La Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambian elections produced a double- digit results for all three candidates: Barrow winning a 43.3% achieving a 3.7% margin of victory over Jammeh’s 39.6% – while, Mama Kandeh, received 17.1% of the votes.
In Liberia, the multiplicity of political parties has been heralded by some including Cllr. Jerome Korkoya, head of the National Elections Commission as a practice of constitutional democracy.
But critics say the multiplicity for a small and poor country like Liberia complicates voters’ decision to make sound choices in a sometimes, polarizing environment where messages of competing candidates may become lost in translation.
Multiplicity of political parties is nothing new to Liberia. In 1997 President Charles Taylor won the election in a landslide, garnering 75 percent of the vote because twelve other political parties failed to come together and form a united front.
Taylor’s closest competitor, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf collected only 10 percent of the vote and no other candidates finished in double digits.
20 Candidates All Sure of Victory
Under a more rigid regime of Samuel Doe, the 1985 presidential elections only featured four political parties – Doe’s National Democratic Party of Liberia, The Liberia Unification Party of the late Gabriel Kpolleh, Jackson Doe’s Liberia Action Party and Edward Kesselly’s Unity Party.
This time around, all 20 political parties are confident of first-round victory, even the ones with very little visibility or traction amongst voters are quietly confident they can pull it off.
As in previous elections, many political observers say a lot of those in the race are hoping an impressive showing could put them in a comfortable position to bargain for jobs in the event of a second round as was the case in the aftermath of the 2005 and 2011 presidential elections which have some similarities to the upcoming race this year.
In 2005, this was the case with Dr. Joseph Korto of the Liberia Equal Rights Party, who following an impressive show in vote-rich Nimba endorsed Sirleaf over Weah and was rewarded with the Minister of Education post, a position he served from 2006-2010.
Dr. Korto placed seventh out of 22 candidates, receiving 3.3% of the vote nationally and the highest vote total in Nimba County, his home base.
John S Morlu Sr , another Lofa county finished with 1.2 percent of the votes and landed the coveted post of Commissioner of the Bureau of Maritime Affairs.
Nathaniel Barnes, who scored less than 1% became Liberian Ambassador to the U.N. and eventually to the United States. Nearly all the remaining 20 candidates and their key partisans received positions in government, while CDC and its partisans were left in the cold.
In 2011, all the opposition candidates (except for Dr. Cecelia Nabe and Dew Mayson) who challenged Sirleaf eventually joined her camp in the second round, securing lucrative positions and contracts in government. As a reward for his support.
Liberty Party Charles Brumksine was promised the ECOWAS Vice President position but he did not get it.
In exchange, he received government-backed contracts, which angered then UP Chairman Varney Sherman. Nearly all the key Executives in Liberty Party secured high level posts in the UP led government during Sirleaf’s second term.
Payouts vs. Promises of Jobs
In 2011, other notables like Senator Prince Y. Johnson of Nimba allegedly received thousands in exchange for his second round support to Sirleaf, thanks to his 13 percent of the votes.
Rev Kennedy Sandy who barely registered in the votes in 2011 was able to secure a $10K a month plus benefits at the Constitutional Review Commission for his support to Sirleaf during the second round.
“It pays to put one’s name on the ballot as a presidential candidate in Liberia”, says an astute observer of Liberian politics, adding “Government jobs and theft of public resources with impunity is the only game in Liberia. Its a huge monetary returned to be on the ballot as a presidential candidate. It’s low investment high reward.”
In 2017, with so many political parties again contesting this year, murmurs of mimicking scenarios are likely to play out once more.
Candidates with similar platforms and competing placards trumpeting change are adding to an already crowded plate of ideals complicating a loaded field of political agendas compounded by the lack of finances exhibited by the struggles most political parties are having to deal with just to stay afloat.
Nearly all of the political parties have little or no presence in the fifteen political subdivisions of the country and many are hardly showing signs of strength outside the capital Monrovia.
A recent tour of the Southeast by FrontPageAfrica for example found limited presence of presidential candidates adding more fuel to the speculations that many are in it, not to win but to put themselves in a position to bargain for jobs down the road.
With a little over a month to election day, political observers expect more of the same in that three or four parties could probably dominate the first round with no candidate likely to win the 50 plus percent of the total national votes required by the constitution to avoid a runoff.
Competing Egos vs. Greed
Whichever way the election goes, political observers say, competing egos and greed will continue to keep Liberia’s political field in freefall with everyone believing they have what it takes to be president under the guise of multiparty democracy. But the real motives being likely to secure government post.
As Liberians saw with the True Wig Party, NDPL, NPP and UP, possibilities are high that the country could be gearing up to another “national unity government,” in which the division of jobs, criss-crossing and carpetbagging to get government posts are among the overriding concerns for many politicians, rather the interest of Liberia and Liberians.
Is 2017 a presidential election or a job hunting apprenticeship, everyone being on stage to secure a job?
Unfortunately, there is no Donald Trump to “fire” leaving the countries 2.1 million registered voters to decide the fate of its 4.6 million population on October 10.
At the end of the day, one of the remaining two will be subsequently fired in November during the anticipated run off, bearing any last-minute surprises – or one-round victory as the majority of the twenty or so candidates looking to replace the departing Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf are predicting.