The late Senator Kekura Kpoto of Lofa County popularized the saying, “put your clothes where the sun shines” but Harrison Karnwea has shown genius by elevating it to a new incredulous level.
The Managing Director of the Forestry Development Authority of Liberia, a cabinet job, is keeping his job in the sunshine in the Unity Party led government while looking to secure the next sunshine by resigning from the Unity Party to join Charles Brumskine in the opposition Liberty Party.
By that the gentleman is keeping his cabinet job to campaign against the very cabinet he works, in an attempt to unseat that government and remain in government a development which mine opposition has met with millions of insults online.
Whatever the torrents contain we are not interested, it is elementary that intellectual and factual scarcities invariably lead to mudslinging; we resist such situation because it undermines and exposes our candidate, VP Boakai who is running on the achievements of the President Sirleaf administration.
Critical decisions are ahead, Karnwean remaining in the cabinet could be viewed as King David’s advisor Hushai role in the Bible with the rebellious son Absalom which eventually helped to stop the uprising?
The Trojans didn’t know what was in the belly of the statue; but here the Unity Party saw the fanfare of his transfer, must we pretend that this dangerous politics has no bearing on the elections? The youth wing has spoken for us all but the debate continues.
And so our call for him to resign is simply a call to save Karnwea from Karnwea and President Sirleaf from embarrassment; a saving gesture not understood by him and his Sicarii. The murky waters of Liberian politics which Kpoto epitomizes is the historical shame to us all but in all honesty to remain in a cabinet and become an opposition is an exhibition of the highest level of Kpoto’s sunshine philosophy that is only self-seeking, unanchored and reveals a desperation of a kind.
Truly desperation and greed leads man in different ways; yet if the Karnwea’s Conundrum is allowed to stand it will not only make Liberia the laughing stock of the global politics but will be a Guinness record. This is not the French system of “co-habitation” where the President is elected from different party and if the majority in parliament is opposition, the leader of that opposition becomes the Prime Minister.
This is where a party wins an election, appoints a card carrying party member to the cabinet and that member resigns from the party, becomes an opposition and intends to sit in the cabinet whose decisions he is opposing in the elections.
What it does though is to present our politics as a children playground and this has been predictable to us believers in politics of ideology for a long time. The historical fact is that the very foundation of politics in Liberia was not ideology but ethnicity, social class, friendship etc; much as we respect them it is a historical fact that even the much vaunted MOJA and PAL were not clear ideology based but rather espoused cloudy pan-Africanism and issue progressivism in their approaches.
Historically the True Whig Party was founded by the darker skinned settlers and held sway for over a century; and the ruling Unity Party today is a coalition that has social democrat like this author, progressives from MOJA and PAL, scions of the TWP and former followers of the warlords.
And so when the man down the street says they are all the same, friend of every president, member of every cabinet, member of every ruling party it represent the distaste of the masses for the perpetual bastardization of politics as such: politics without ideology! So, they go after all and have no ideological foes or soul mates. So one man runs from the ruling party cabinet meeting and rushes to the opposition party executive committee meeting to formulate means to defeat or counter the policies which he is just from fashioning.
It reminds me of the tale of spider as told by my father: spider wanted to benefit the feasts in two neighboring towns and so went in the middle tie his waist with a strong twine with end in each town; he instructed the youth to haul on the ropes to alert him that the meal was ready in each village.
Unfortunately for him the wedding feast in one village and the funeral feast in the other were ready at the same time and the both camps started hauling him at the same time; the ropes tightened on him as he yelled in the forest all alone for help but no help could come as everyone was busy in one of the villages.
As the story goes, spider who was a very tall handsome light skinned man was squeezed into what we see today, and jumped into the trees where he lives now. The moral of this Dan(Gio) folks lore is simplistic.
Thus Alaric Tokpa and Abraham Mitchell blazed the path to cure Liberia of this dangerous malaise by forming a party based on ideology. I got converted while reading political science at the University of Liberia and rose through the ranks to become one of the foremost ideologue and leader of social democracy in Liberia. I equally recruited, trained and taught many across Liberia.
In the Karnwean Conundrum debate today much visceral attacks are coming from those we formerly taught and led in the social democratic movement, a development that so much resonant with history that one can only marveled on the potency of reactionaries; because fundamentally I know that the encrustation of nearly two centuries of bastardized politics requires a systematic long term revolutionary approach which will result in the taking of state power by an ideological party to commence the re-education and restructuring of politics in Liberia.
Truly, politics without ideology is a deeply rooted malaise in Liberia body politics; it is deeply imbedded by the Kpoto’s wisdom of this world and will take years of real hard work to remove.
We are presented with facts that no amount of vilifications and name calling can concealed its unpalatable intellectual nature and its incestuous contradictions: President Sirleaf is Standard Bearer Emeritus of the Unity Party, VP Boakai is the Standard Bearer of the Unity Party and both Chairs and Co-Chairs the cabinet of the Unity Party led government; and now enters Karnwea with broad shoulders sitting in that cabinet when he is the presumptive running mate of Unity Party’s perennial opponent, Charles Brumskine.
Personally as follower of comrade Christ Jesus who said “no man can serve two masters” I will not want to be a Karnwean in that cabinet room where everyone knows that whatever policy decisions made and issues considered are not protected from the opposition.
This is where ideology and principles come to play my dear writers of insults; this is the strength of principles in politics and confirmation of the need for ideology as the drivers in one’s political journey. Why would a human being subject himself to such embarrassing situation as sitting in the Unity Party led government cabinet when you are openly opposition?
Inarguably, the Karnwea Conundrum is a poignant reminder of what is gravely wrong with our body politics; it is a historical problem that hurts us all and unfortunately for generations of Liberians it continues to be the guiding yardstick. Bereft of any ideological adherence and dehydrated of all flows of principles, the barren Liberian political landscape is a land where the rapper says, “anything can happen”.
And herein lies the irrefutable perils of our politics that took us to a terrible national bloodbath and condemns us to the culture of corruption is revealed: the absence of the glue of politics and political parties which is political ideology and the ascendancy of the unpatriotic Kpoto’s mantra.
As we say at the capitol what is the way forward; here it is, simple but enormous responsibility to those who would love a politics of commitment to ideals, beliefs and principles as oppose to one anchor on what I can get and go.
The current situation compels us to warm up to the job of providing our young people with the essence of ideology and insist that our political class embrace ideology as the basis for the formation of a political party.
And from our own background we can evolve ideology as diverse and exhilarating as our national cuisine, ascribe identity and ideas to propel this country to greatness, otherwise the Karnwea Conundrum which is the restatement, enlargement and the amendment of the despicable Kpoto Mantra will take root and hold our politics in its evil snare forever.
In any case the one and single truth is Liberia will change only if its politics is changed to what politics is meant to be: anchor on beliefs, principles and values and these as the drivers for membership, policies and operation.
In that way like we see in the United States, South Africa and around in more matured democracies where politics is based on ideology, we will not be confronted with these insidious political anomalies that are defended as if life itself would go were it not to stand.
Worlea-Saywah Dunah, Contributing Writer
The author is a social democrat, a lawyer and a member of the legislature in Liberia and serves as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and Chief of the Liberian Delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly