Monrovia – Former campaign chairman for Montserrado County of the ruling Unity Party, Musa Hassan Bility, on Monday officially joined the Liberty Party of Cllr. Charles Walker Brumskine, vowing to make the LP political leader the next President of Liberia.
Report by James Harding Giahyue – [email protected]
The businessman-politician announced at the weekend that he was leaving the ruling party amid speculation of being the running mate to Cllr. Brumskine.
“It was a pleasure to have worked and served over the years and to have worked and served over the years and to have been a proud member of the teams that elected the leadership of this country in two successive elections,” Bility wrote in a letter to UP’s Chairman Wilmot Paye.
Vice running mate or not, the program at LP’s headquarters on the Old Road was not anything short of promising.
At one point, it looked as if Cllr. Brumskine were already the President of Liberia.
Jubilant partisans and supporters flocked into the party’s Old Road headquarters, chanting slogans. Some held up placards with inscription: “…Through you we find victory” and “Liberty Party welcomes Hon. Musa Bility”.
Bility filled and signed an LP membership form to finalize the formality of joining the party before being gowned with a white garment with “LP” inscribed all over it.
In remarks, Bility said he had joined the LP to assist the party build up on the gains made by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the areas of freedom of speech and democracy.
Bility said he was happy living in a country “where today someone of my stature in business and in politics is free to make a decision to leave the ruling party and join the incoming ruling party.”
He said he was joining Cllr. Brumskine because he had showed great leadership for more than a decade as an opposition politician as he said Liberia was faced with the challenge finding the right leader that can take the country to the next level from where President Sirleaf would leave it.
“As a person, when I make a political decision, I do not make it because I have one vote or because I love the person,” Bility said.
“I am a stakeholder. I employ several hundred Liberians. Over the last five years, I have invested over US$50 million into our economy.
And therefore I have a stake into what happens to the country.
“I have come to know Cllr. Brumskine; his quality has impressed me.”
He said each of the two times Cllr. Brumskine had lost the elections; the LP political leader had called him up for discussion.
“I have come with this decision knowing the person I want to trust, the person that I believe that you have trusted for this decade.
“As a people, we all reflect, we come along and we make political decisions, but today my decision to join the Liberty Party—it will surprise you to note—is not because I believe that Liberty Party is the party that is going to win.
It is because I believe that the Liberty Party has the leadership that is fit to run this country.
“The winning is our job; that is what I am here for.”
Bility praised Cllr. Brumskine for being the only politician in Liberia who for the past decade and more has not been involved in a controversy or scandal.
You have been a loyal partisan. Your loyalty is not compared to any party that I have seen,” he said.
For his part, Cllr. Bruskine said he was convinced that something was about to happen with the LP.
“Musa’s coming to the Liberty Party is not about a big catch.
His membership in our partner signifies the manifestation of my dream for our country and the mission of Liberty Party,” Cllr. Brumskine said to a rapturous reception inside the party’s headquarters.
Battle cries were sounded. Cultural performances were held and a whole euphoria of a Liberty Party patriotism heightened.
“When Liberty Party was conceived as an idea, it was never about partisanship, it was never about an individual. It was always about our country,” Cllr. Brumskine continued.
“This is our dream; this is our mission to reconcile all of our people, regardless of ethnic background, regardless of religion, regardless of social class. We have a common denominator and that is called Liberia.”
He concluded: “Musa Hassan Bility joins Liberty Party today? Wow!”
Chairman Benjamin Sanvee said Bility’s defection to the LP was “warning, this is a caveat and this is a promise to our opponents if for whatever reason you have in our mind that Liberty Party will not be formidable in 2017, think again.”
He added: “We encourage members of all political parties to come onboard, all of them. We are not going to pick and choice because we understand—like our slogan say—‘together we can do better.’”
LP’s vice chairman for political affairs Darius Dillon praised him for being “one of Liberia’s finest sons” with “zero tolerance for defeat and equivalent to an entire constituency.
Party’s secretary general Benjamin Jacob said the party was not willing to repeat its results in the 2005 and 2011 elections.
“Let them read the old results. By 2017 the current result will be read and everyone will be happy,” Jacob said.
“We are moving as a moving train and will not be stopped.”