Monrovia – The Executive Mansion has termed as false and misleading Senator Prince Y. Johnson’s purported prophecy of foreseeing massive rigging in the 2023 presidential elections by this government.
The Deputy Presidential Press Secretary Smith Toby urged the Senator to “go back to his dreaming bed.”
Toby told Executive Mansion reporters Tuesday, November 5, that such a dream by Senator Johnson is “visionless and makes no sense.”
“Some of the actors, who were involved with the destruction of people’s homes during the war are now building for themselves huge infrastructures that are being turned over to their communities for use, something we all appreciate, but to say that there is a plan to rig election is false and misleading.
“That vision is a dull vision and makes no sense and God himself who suffered for this peace will not want to see this peace derailed by any means, so that vision is being misinterpreted,” Toby said.
He added, “Senator Johnson needs to go back to bed and sleep again and let God give him that same vision.”
This is not Senator Johnson’s first prophesy against the President. Sen. Johnson, who is the political leader for the opposition Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction (MDR), had said prophesied during the heat of the 2017 political campaign period that if George Weah became president, Liberia would have returned to war.
That revelation is yet to come to pass; now he has put out another prophesy, this time stating that the President and his government would rig the election in 2023 and that action will take Liberian to violence.
Senator Johnson, a former warlord and leader of the warring faction, Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), a breakaway from Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), made his revelation in Nimba County over the weekend during a tour of his US$5.5 million PYJ Polytechnic University. The university is set to come online in July 2020.
Sen. Johnson, now an “Evangelist,” further said, “I see confusion between civilian and people; I see more demonstration, and I see more chaos. I’m a man of God. If it doesn’t happen, what I tell you, don’t believe me.”
“That vision is a dull vision and makes no sense and God himself who suffered for this peace will not want to see this peace derailed by any means, so that vision is being misinterpreted”
Smith Toby, Presidential Press Secretary
But reacting, Toby expressed disappointment in the Nimba County Senator for turning what he called “a developmental ceremony into a ground for prophecy about plan to rig elections in Liberia.”
Smith maintained that the Nimba County lawmaker’s vision for President Weah to rig the 2023 election “will never become true.” He attributed the Senator’s statement to pressure from his partisans for job.
Toby used the interview to assure Liberians that the National Elections Commission (NEC) will conduct a free, fair and transparent elections in 2023.
“President Weah will go to a free and fair election, if he gets the mandate of the electorates find, if he doesn’t win as per the mandate of the people, so be it,” Toby quipped.
“So, Senator Johnson should stop putting fear in the people. Senator Johnson’s statement is far from the truth. He doesn’t know where God spoke to him, which time of the night, his vision is a dull vision.”
According to the Deputy Presidential Press Secretary, Sen. Johnson made his prophesy against the President because he had made some personal requests to the President and the Chief Executive has not given the Senator’s requests any recognition.
Smith said one of such request from Sen. Johnson is that the President should employ his partisans in government.
“The Senator spoke out of anger and his comments are geared toward calling the President’s attention to his dissatisfaction.
“Senator Johnson has been pushing for people to be in government. He has been agitating and making several requests for his partisans to get employment,” Toby disclosed.
“Every time Senator Johnson makes requests and they are delayed, he gets angry and makes statements. President Weah’s leadership will not be moved by that.
“When he gets angry, he thinks to make some of those comments will give him attention.”
Toby informed the Senator that the government will not bring everyone on board as he expects or wants.
In another development, Toby stated that Deputy Defense Minister for Administration Olandrus Dixon was not directly shot as being rumored in the public.
An agent of the presidential guard, Executive Protection Service (EPS), over the weekend wounded Deputy Defense Minister Dixon with particles of a gunfire intended for an operator of a vehicle that ran into the President’s convoy.
He maintained that the EPS officer’s firearm went out of control in the public.
According to Smith, the arm was not pointed at the Deputy Minister but was pointed to the ground where it was discharged.
“As a trained security man, you do not play with weapons in the midst of people. The Minister is recuperating; that was just an unfortunate situation,” Toby said.
Refusing to mention the name of the EPS officer, he disclosed that the officer in question is now being interrogated.