Internal Split Imminent in Ruling Party

28 July 2011

A slugfest, which though subdued appears likely to threaten the internal cohesion of the ruling Unity Party (UP), is slowly taking roots and threatening internal division, party insiders told The Analyst over the weekend.

They said unless party leaders met and took decisions that would streamline cash management and disbursement and ensure orderliness and cohesion as the party campaigned for President Sirleaf’s reelection, UP would go to the polls a party fractured, bruised, and vulnerable.

Now, according to the insiders’ account, which this paper could not verify over the weekend, competing groups and interests within the party are fighting over the control of the party’s campaign purse. They did not say how much was in the purse.

But they claimed that as the result of the failure of the party’s leadership to set clear policy guidelines for cash management and disbursement, some partisans were using their positions and connections to impose upon the process and make decisions about who receives what amount, for what purpose, and when.

The insiders said the presidential advisor and biological son of President Sirleaf, Robert Sirleaf, was prominent amongst those who were taking advantage of the policy and regulation void to make unauthorized and unilateral financial disbursement decisions.

The intrusive imposition, they quoted unnamed “top ruling party executives” says saying, was not only making it increasingly difficult to begin implementing the party’s campaign strategies, but that it was also “slowing down major policy imperatives toward a decisive electoral period”.

They did not say how, but they said Mr. Sirleaf’s superimposition was likely to create what they called an “internal feud and split” that would discourage many partisans who are currently overzealous about promoting President Sirleaf’s second-term bid.

What was hurting the party’s chances, they said, was not only that Mr. Sirleaf took charge of the party’s purse, was sitting on campaign funds, and was deciding who gets what, but that he was also way out of touch with the realities of Liberia’s electoral politics to make any impact upon the electorates – especially the undecided and opposition partisans.

They noted that instead of sitting with other party leaders and strategists to decide how to apply the campaign funds, Mr. Sirleaf was dishing the funds out to so-called “opinion leaders”, whose efforts, they claimed, would have little or no impacts in shifting and steadying the polls in the rulings party’s favor.

As the result of the presidential advisor’s action, they said, there was widespread resentment within the party as many await the intervention of the party leadership and President Sirleaf in the matter, which they described as an “unfortunate attempt by some higher-ups to shoot the party in the leg”.

One insider told this paper that part of the problem was sheer snobbishness and the lack of trust amongst some members of the party’s top bracket, but that “One does not have to spike one’s nose to spite one’s face” – meaning, he said, that internal hatred would cost the party the national elections.

He said many within the party’s top hierarchy were of the view that the best way forward was for create a “chain and predictable supervision” over funds and campaign policy if the party must speak with one voice and move as one force dedicated to continuity, unity, and progress.

Another insider said the ruling party’s headache now was not how to defeat the “fragile and policy bereft” opposition, but how to remove the ambiguity and prevent individuals who have no idea about how to run an effective campaign from dominating UP’s campaign to its injury, to the despair of millions of upbeat partisans.

Many partisans, he said, were afraid that unless Mr. Sirleaf’s alleged superimposition was curtailed, the ugly specter of “monkey works, baboon draw” would return to party politics as it were within Liberia’s longest reigning party, “the Grand Old True Whig Party”.

AllAfrica – All the Time