Suakoko District, Bong County – The scramble for the representative seat of electoral district five in Bong County is more about history than political parties or the number of candidates vying to contest.
Report by Selma Lomax, [email protected]
History shows that no lawmaker has ever been re-elected in the district. The district has had a new lawmaker, every six years.
This is strange in a county where most lawmakers in the county are usually guaranteed a 12-year run of two terms, according to political pundits.
When the people of the district go to the polls on October 10 this year, most of them will choose among the top three candidates — James Dorbor Sao of the Coalition for Liberia Progress, Silas Siakor (Independent) and incumbent Edward Karfiah of the People’s Unification Party (PUP)— who retain the most popularity among the fifteen vying candidates.
The people of the district, which comprises Yellequelleh and Suakoko, are the proponents of the saying that they ‘cannot serve a leader twice’, which has now become a scare for every serving lawmaker in the district.
Karfiah faces the challenges of declining political influence and competitive advantages of opponents in his aspirations to break the second term jinx in the district.
Karfiah has in the past two years been hung between political relevance and obscurity over his failure to continue his scholarship scheme he introduced at the start of his tenure and his inability to deliver on campaign promises he made in 2011.
“They used our money and lied to us that the scholarship is their personal scholarship. No he can’t continue the scholarship anymore,” Jeremiah Frank, a resident of Sergeant Kollie Town.
Another resident of the district, Beatrice McGill, told FrontPageAfrica Friday:
“For me, I voted for Honorable Karfiah 2011 election but I have decided not to vote him because he is from the People’s Unification Party (PUP) and I am from the All Liberian Party.”
This, according to political observers, makes it difficult to say with certainty what remains of Karfiah’s influence on the political scene in the district as his hitherto firm grip on the politics of the district now lie more on the realm of conjecture than on plausibility.
The instances where Karfiah has been able to prove that he can still call the shots are too few and cannot be relied upon to show his strength, according to political observers in the district.
Disappointingly for Karfiah, he now has geo-politics to contend with. The people in Suakoko, which has fifty five percent of the registered voters, feel it is their turn to fill the position.
According to the citizens they had allowed others to serve in such capacity in the past.
“This is Suakoko district turn. For too long we have allowed others but gone are those days.”
“We have decided as a district to support a single candidate who is James Dorbor Sao, a person of honesty and someone who has huge followings not just in Suakoko district but Yellequelleh district where the incumbent comes from,” Jacob Kolleh, a youth of Sergeant Kollie town.
While geo-politics seems to be playing against Karfiah, candidate Sao, it is the opposite with Sao, a native of Suakoko district.
The fact that Suakoko has not produced a lawmaker, many are predicting that it could work in Sao’s favor.
Though new on the political turf in the district, Sao has surprisingly become relevant and a force to reckon with in the -thanks to his people-centered initiatives across the district.