Thank you Rodney Sieh and FrontPageAfrica for a well-researched article and for raising the red alarm about the potential of fraud in the upcoming October 10, 2017 Liberian elections. And all of the signals for a rigged elections and violence are clear for all to see.
I have always said that Liberia is Africa’s first failed experiment at democracy and exported the anti-democracy virus to the rest of the continent.
How else could one justify planting the first seed of democracy when 95 percent of the population was excluded in 1847?
And Liberians have been paying the price and will continue to pay the price in blood and tears until we get it right.
Apparently, we seem not to learn any lessons from the 14-year deadly civil war; and those who confessed to planning the war and who hijacked the political system are even more now anti-democratic than previous regimes.
In the 1929 presidential election of Congua-only candidates pitting Charles Dunbar Burgess King against one Mr. Faulkner, there were 15,000 registered Congua only voters as natives were excluded.
But when the election results were announced, Mr. King “won” with 234,000 votes, all time vote-fraud record that is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Liberia’s longest serving dictator, William VS Tubman and his Congua-only True Whig Party were notorious in silencing any opposition even when Tubman had to kill one of their own, David Coleman.
Samuel Doe, the first native who righteously seized power from the Congua in 1980 was infected with the anti-democracy virus he inherited from the Americo-Liberians/Congua and perfected it in the first multi-party 1986 presidential elections.
Then came the civil war from 1989 to 2003. But in the 1997 elections, rebel Charles Taylor held the nation hostage with guns pointed to the headed of voters and the slogan was: ” he killed my pa, he killed my ma but I will vote for him.” And Taylor “won” with over 70 percent of the votes.
You fast forward to both the 2005 and 2011 rigged elections and the dismal performance and corrupt leadership of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. No wonder Ellen is begging for immunity/clemency from prosecution and her cleaver manipulation of the October elections and to install her handpicked stooge.
And as FrontPageAfrica clearly stated but forget to mention Ellen’s confession in America on how the 2005 votes were rigged in her favor.
At the historic black Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York City, Ellen unashamedly narrated how Liberian mothers would deny food to their voting children unless they traded up their voter registration cards for food. Thus, most mothers voted more than once for the absent children.
Then the November 2011 letter by former National Elections Commission Chairman James Fromoyan to CDC on how his NEC had switched the votes by giving CDC’s winning votes to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, only for Fromoyan to lie that he did not read the letter he had signed and sent to CDC.
And here we are on the verge of holding yet other presidential elections with all the recipes for fraud and controversies by both the NEC and the Supreme Court of Liberia by the Court’s double-talk on the Code of Conduct law.
The Court barred Selena Mappy Polson and Abu Kamara from contesting but allowed Harrison Karnwea and by extension Mills Jones, Alex Cummings, Jeremiah Sulunteh and opened the floodgates for others.
Senator Varney Sherman and the lawmakers need to pass a law that definitively terminates Ellen Sirleaf and her VP’s term on the third Monday in January regardless of the outcome in the elections.
Additionally, the NEC and the Supreme Court need to resolve the matter of Amos Siebo, the former aide to President Sirleaf who was arrested for turning his home into a virtual printing press of voter registration cards.
Mr. Siebo was working then in President Sirleaf’s Office, ironically with the title of “Presidential Deliverables.” How did Seibo get hold of NEC computers, printers, cameras, voter registration forms and other related materials to end up in his home?
And the NEC Chairman Jerome Korkoya created another controversy when he told the Senate that anyone with a voter registration card will be allowed to vote regardless, a recipe for fraud. The NEC says officially there are 2,183,683 registered voters.
We applaud the Supreme Court of Kenya for its supremely decision in the rigged Kenyan elections.
But can the Supreme Court of Liberia already embroiled in controversial election cases rise to the occasion and call a spade a spade?
I am afraid not based on its flip-flop rulings in the Code of Conduct law. Otherwise, I smell trouble in October…and thank God Ellen will be there herself juggle the mess.
Jerry Wehtee Wion,
Journalist and Political Commentator
Washington, DC.