CDC Discloses 2011 Campaign Strategy

The Informer (Monrovia)

4 May 2011

Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) National Secretary General Acarous Gray has disclosed what he calls the party’s campaign strategy that will be applied to oust the President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party (UP) led administration in this year’s general and presidential elections.

Mr. Gray boasted that the CDC – under its 2011 dream ticket of Cllr. Winston Tubman as standard bearer and soccer legend George Weah as vice standard bearer – will stand as a formidable force against the UP, and claimed that President Sirleaf was already afraid of the party’s new makeup.

Mr. Gray said the party and its partisan would go from house to house as a campaign methodology to win political souls for the CDC victory. He said the party was very formidable and fearless, and that many people and top political figures and supporters are preparing to join the party.

We will move from house to house…we will used the Jehovah Witness campaign…we will do street preaching and go into every corner to get the support of the masses,” Gray said on a local radio talk show in Monrovia Monday.

He claimed that President Sirleaf is “the least of our ranks” because she has lost local and international support as a result of the many misgivings of her administration.

Before the weekend’s convention, Mr. Weah had vowed he will be second to none as head of “his” party, but partisans of the CDC decided his fate over the weekend when they preferred the experience lawyer to take the party to the polls in 2011.

“Politics is about number and the Liberian people have given me their blessing to direct leadership and guidance for them, and why should I go as vice running mate to counselors [Charles] Brumskine or Winston Tubman?” Mr. Weah wondered in a radio-telephone interview last year from Ghana.

But, over the weekend, after his defeat to the former UN Representative to Somalia, Mr. Weah said CDC was “larger than any one partisan”, including himself, and that therefore its existence, rather than the political obsession of its leaders, should be the concern of every partisan.

The decision to rob Mr. Weah as first partisan of the CDC comes following more than three years of futile efforts to merge the CDC with mainstream political parties including the Liberty P arty of Charles Brumskine

After three days of tough contentions and maneuvering, partisans of CDC decided to go to the presidential polls later this year with the former standard-bearer the Liberia national Union, Tubman as presidential candidate and George Weah as vice presidential candidate.

The more than 250 certified CDC convention delegates drawn from across the country made the decision during the party’s national convention held in Kakata, Margibi County.

CDC’s Tubman-Weah ticket, delegates are convinced, will present a formidable challenge to the reelection bid of President Johnson-Sirleaf.

Following debates and speeches, voting got underway with no doubt left in any delegate that it was about endowing Tubman with the gavel of CDC on silver platter than about putting majority rule to work – about the power of caucus over majority rule.

When the result of the vote was finally tallied and presented to the delegates, 118 delegates wanted Tubman to lead their party to the poll while 111 chose Weah.

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