Barclayville, Grand Kru County – Political party’s supporters in Grand Kru County, in southeastern Liberia, are expressing their opposition to their candidate’s opponent in a strange way: tearing poster or banner with image of the ‘opponent’.
For now, to my knowledge, the victims are incumbent Representative (Hon.) Numene T. H. Bartekwa (District #2, Unity Party); Doris N. Ylatun (District #1, Coalition for Democratic Change); and Kumeh Assaf (District #1, Liberty Party)
“They tore off my image from my banner, leaving my party’s standard bearer and the vice-standard bearer,” lamented candidate of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC), Doris N. Ylatun, to me in Barclayville, Grand Kru County’s capital, on August 29. “People in Gbanken, where my banner was damaged, saw the person who did it, but they didn’t stop him or her, or report the person to the Town’s authorities.”
Report of damage of Madam Ylatun’s banner Gbanken, a Town in the Wedabo Chiefdom, reached her two days later.
Much of Hon. Bartekwa’s face, from his eyes, was ripped off from his banner erected along Hospital Camp road, in Barclayville, where his campaign office was.
“Two little children did that on August 24,” Saybeh Toe, 17, told me at a Barbershop few yards from the damaged banner on September 17.
“They threw stones at the banner, which caused the tear.”
He said the children were caught while throwing the stones at the candidate’s campaign material, taken to Hon. Bartekwa’s party’s headquarters, but were released minutes later “because they were small,” he said.
A young man was caught in front one of Hon. Bartekwa’s banners, after he wrote failure to election 2017 on the banner, Saybeh Toe said.
I met the ripped banner of Liberty Party Representative-candidate Kumeh Assaf on the grassy community field in Juduken, a Town in the Wedabo Chiefdom, on September `17. “Some cows uprooted the banner one week ago,” a young man in a house few yards from where the banner lied told me during a brief interview.
The Superintendent of Grand Kru County, Elizabeth Dempster, told me on September 7 that those who tear down political parties’ representatives’ campaign materials (in public places) in the County are “paid agents, who work in the night.” Such action is “rampant, especially in Barclayville,” she added.
“Such action is a gross electoral offence,” Mr. Michael Wisseh, former Development Superintendent of Grand Kru County, and now Campaign Manager for Liberty Party’s District #1 Representative candidate Jonathan Fonati Koffa, said in an exclusive interview with me in Camp Three, Barclayville, on September 18.
“What much will these people tearing or pulling-down political opponents’ posters or banner get from such act? My candidate isn’t a victim yet, but I’m gravely concerned about this action. And I know he too is.”
The time in which the (crime) is committed makes arresting the perpetrators impossible, Grand Kru County’s commander of the Liberia National Police (LNP), Adolphus Siafa Cole, told me in a brief interview at a campaign rally by CDC’s candidate Doris N. Ylatun in Picnic Cess statutory district on August 30.
“It happens when most people are asleep,” he said, “but the Police command here has in its custody a young man who said he saw an under-18 tearing a banner of one of the candidates.” He refused to disclose each suspect’s name.
Posters—especially those pasted on walls of private residential homes—are not spared.
“People pasting these political parties’ candidates’ posters do not ask permission from owners of these homes, before posting them, so owners of these buildings pull down these posters,” Samuel Gweh, a member of the Gbanken’s Youth Association, told me during a interview on September 2.
Road conditions in Grand Kru County make early intervention or arrest by the Grand Kru’s team of the Liberia National Police—with less than 17 officers, Commander Adolphus Cole had disclosed to me—impossible.
One example is the route to Juduken that takes at least two hours on legs due to inaccessibility of road to car or motorbike. (I trekked on this road on 17th and 18th of September, 2017)
Most Grand Kruans fear that the destruction of campaign materials by unscrupulous elements in the County would cause a divisive effects shortly after the Liberia’s Presidential and legislative elections in 2017.
“Tearing candidates’ campaign posters or banner could further tear apart our County which is already torn on political or ethnic lines, before we entered into this electioneering period,” CDC’s Doris N. Ylatun lamented to me in an interview Camp Three, Barclayville, where she lives.
Others are predicting the consequence of tearing or pulling down a candidate’s campaign banner: The victim today would not extend development projects in community, when he or she is the (new) Representative.
“That would be similar to now-incumbent Grand Kru County’s Representatives’ or Senators’ marginalization of parts of their Districts where their campaign posters or banners were torn or pulled down in public places during past elections,” a prominent citizen of the County, who didn’t want his name published, told me on September 19 in Barclayville.
Reporting – Samuel G. Dweh/ Freelance Journalist