6 December 2011
The opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) boycotted the November 8 presidential runoff on unprovable vote-rigging claims and staged a “peace vigil” that degenerated into a violent confrontation between its partisans and police. What happened is an overly told story. However, what has been happening behind political closed doors in the name of “peace dialogue”, since then, is bothering many legal minded and patriotic Liberians, who fear the Sirleaf Administration might be trapping itself into a governance circus – of a Gyude Bryant type NTGL – in the vain name of peace. The Analyst, reports.
Hundreds of citizens’ calls over the last several days have affirmed the findings of The Analyst’s weekend opinion survey that the reported demand of the opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) for administrative slots in government is inimical to sustainable peace and democratic governance in postwar Liberia. According media reports confirmed by our Executive Mansion source, CDC Standard-bearer Cllr. Winston Tubman told President Sirleaf during their stakeholder meeting last week that the party could tune down its ant-government rhetoric and call off planned street marches, if the administration met it halfway.
Meeting CDC halfway, according to our source, would mean that the Sirleaf Administration must allot to the party several ministries and agencies to which it would appoint administrators. Cllr. Tubman and those who accompanied him to the meeting did not say which ministries and agencies they would prefer, but according to our source, they were keeping their demands close to their chests pending the administration’s consent to the violence-for-job deal. The source said the CDC leadership needed to pull the deal through at all costs as a face-saving and appeasement measure, because it needed to give convincing reasons to its radical left for the sudden decision to cooperate with the Sirleaf Administration, which it accused of colluding with NEC to rob it of presidential victory.
Background
Having claimed vote rigging on October 15 and subsequently announced a boycott of the November 8 presidential runoff, CDC staged a “peace vigil” on November 7 that degenerated into violent confrontation with police. The party claimed seven dead, but managed to produce only one coffin, which it paraded through the principal streets of Monrovia on November 21, in what observed called “rowdy” funeral procession.
Even though the party held the procession without security permit in keeping with law, police stood by as marchers constricted traffic and party agent provocateurs rerouted motorists. The party had since blended the vote-rigging claims with the police gaffe as alibi to hold more street marches in demand of the annulment of the runoff results and justice for the dead and injured. The party’s last threat of violence for justice and result annulment called for a month-long violent street protests leading up to the presidential inauguration due January 16, 2012.
Attempts by moderate party executives, including the national chairman, to tune down the anti-Sirleaf demonstrations, at least in consideration of its price on peace, struck the party’s Achilles heels. As punishment for calling for a lull in violence, Standard-bearer Tubman and Vice Standard-bearer Weah announced the expulsion of five executives, an expulsion that media reports say is developing hiccup, as National Chairman Geraldine Doe-Sherif is claiming no knowledge of any punitive action against her and others.
Mr. Tubman however told reporters this week that CDC was suspending street marches in place of committee mediation with government, which resulted from the meeting he, Weah, and other CDC executives held with President Sirleaf. He said the 5-man CDC committee would work with the Executive Mansion to “move Liberia forward and promote the peace process”, from confrontation to cooperation. Patriotic, legal, and peace-minded Liberians should welcome this statement from Cllr. Tubman, a legal practitioner and bureaucrat who metamorphosed into a radical politician since the 2011 elections. But they say Tubman’s comment about peace was a euphemism for the party’s trading of violence for peace and that therefore, it was “unfortunately insincere” and a recipe for future conflict. But why?
Blackmail – for coalition or inclusion
“It is a blackmail of the government and the trading of the people’s plight for job,” shouted John Paterson, 28, an AMEU junior management student who claimed to be member of CDC. Paterson said he welcomed any peace dialogue between government and CDC that focused on addressing the outcomes of the elections and death of partisans but that it was repugnant for Weah and Tubman to blackmail the government for jobs. “If they wanted jobs, they should have said so rather than making us to believe that they have genuine electoral issues, causing innocent youths to participate in street marches at their perils,” he said.
The hundreds of mainly UP, CDC, and non-partisan Liberians who called to this paper over the last several days and many others who responded to its opinion survey concurred with Paterson. The callers expressed disgust at CDC’s reported demand upon the Sirleaf Administration for jobs as precondition for calling off its obstruction of postwar Liberia’s peace and reconciliation and democratization processes. “There are two things wrong with the reported demands,” said survey respondent Jeremy Gayflor of Jacob’s Town in Paynesville. “Honoring it would mean either that President Sirleaf was bribing CDC into silence, which confirms the party’s claims that NEC rigged the elections in UP’s favor.”
Otherwise, he said, it would mean that CDC lost the elections but that since it needed government jobs so badly for its standard-bearer and several “do-nothing, loud-mouthed radicals” it resorted to violent confrontation to gain relevance and use it as bargaining chip. “If UP wins the presidential votes as NEC and 4000 plus local and international observers said, then there is no reason under the sun for Sirleaf to negotiation job deals with Tubman and Weah,” said another respondent, UP partisan Jacob Matthews of Kakata in Margibi County. Concurring with the views of many other respondents, Matthews said while any job-for-peace deal with CDC would help accelerate the return to peace and appease CDC, it was inimical to democratic governance.
“If the Sirleaf Administration yields to CDC’s blackmail, it would have itself to blame if conditions and governance in the country degenerated into decadence mode,” concurred a legal practitioner and former civil society delegate to the 2003 Accra peace talks, who preferred to remain anonymous.
According to him, delegates at the negotiations chose to subordinate discussions on the conditions that plunged Liberia into war to talks about dividing the “national cake”. “There was mutual conspiracy amongst warlords, civil society representatives, and Diaspora representatives to subordinate the plight of Liberians who were then reeling in poverty and fear. As it is today, everyone was thinking at the time of what was in the talks for them,” he recalled.
At the two-month-long dialogues, he said, delegates divided the government, suspended the constitution, and flew to Monrovia to loot the nation’s resources as the poor, war-dispossessed watched helplessly. He said the national transition government that they formed ended up the most corrupt, “free-for-all party” of a peace arrangement, the nation had even known. “No one told the other what to do because the nomination authorities were all equal. Gyude Bryant became a mere figurehead as ministers became law unto themselves, answerable only to the principals – LURD, MODEL, civil society, and Taylor administration, etc.,” he claimed. He conceded that the NTGL would be different in several ways from the Sirleaf Administration, but he noted that Tubman’s demand for nominating powers bears resemblance to NTGL.
“If Sirleaf gives Tubman nominating power, would it not be prudent that she also give him removal power if he so demands?” he wondered. If providing jobs for CDC partisans became the beckon for pacifying CDC, according to him, it followed that the dismissal of any CDC nominee by President Sirleaf would count as anti-peace and a challenge to the party’s interest. “Is that the kind of governance quicksand that the president is pulling her administration onto in the name of peace dialogue?” wondered Daniel Joyblah, who claimed to be UP partisan. Cllr. Tubman called the negotiations “peace sacrifice”, discounting critics’ claims that his party was trading violence for peace.
He however did not do a great job of a denial. “I will accept job from the government if I’m called to serve my people; but if I’m given a job that’s because I’m qualified and not that I’m begging for job,” Cllr. Tubman told reporters shortly after meeting with President Sirleaf. News had circulated fast amongst reporters that CDC has submitted several proposals to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf demanding jobs for its executives. “The proposals are being discussed by committee from both parties, after which recommendations will be made to the president, forming the basis for whatever action the President may take on the CDC proposal,” Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Badio told reporters Monday. Mr. Badio gave no details.
When it was put to CDC’s activist spokesman, George Solo, that his party was betraying the trust of the Liberian people by demanding jobs, he retorted, “We are not begging for jobs”. Observers say the contextual difference would not matter as to the intent, if “not begging for job” was simply the antithesis of “demanding job” or “blackmailing for jobs”. Up to press time last night, this paper could not confirm the exact nature of CDC’s reported violence-for-job deal, but statements attributed to President Sirleaf yesterday, during separate meetings with CDC and NPP, appeared to let the cat out of the bag. An Executive Mansion release quoted the president as telling representatives of the two parties, “One party cannot develop the country”.
The statement could mean that the president is considering forming a government of inclusion, which many say is acceptable. “But if the formation of a government of inclusion means parties owning ministries and agencies and appointing whomever they want to the top post, then that is a coalition government, not government of inclusion,” said university economics graduate Martha Tarlu of Sinkor.
She said a coalition government, which she claim appeared likely unless President Sirleaf saw the danger in what she was pursuing in the so-called peace dialogue, would endanger both peace and governance. “First, it is illegal; it does not fit our executive administrative system of governance. Second, continuous peace would depend on how well President Sirleaf tolerated the sluggishness and welfare of party appointees, who might or might not work in the interest of the government or the Liberian people,” she said.
Worst, she said, it would open a Pandora Box for other parties and individuals to make demand upon the government and resort to anti-government and anti-peace activities to force compliance. “Remember, CDC has no monopoly over violence,” she said. Analysts say while observers’ views might be extreme, made mostly out of fear of the worst, the Sirleaf Administration needed to take a moral and administrative high ground, if what goes as “peace dialogue” today does not set the agenda for future bickering.
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