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<\/a><\/p>\n6 December 2011<\/p>\n
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The opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) boycotted the November 8 presidential runoff on unprovable vote-rigging claims and staged a \u201cpeace vigil\u201d 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 \u201cpeace dialogue\u201d, since then, is bothering many legal minded and patriotic Liberians, who fear the Sirleaf Administration might be trapping itself into a governance circus \u2013 of a Gyude Bryant type NTGL \u2013 in the vain name of peace. The Analyst, reports.<\/em><\/p>\n Hundreds of citizens\u2019 calls over the last several days have affirmed the findings of The Analyst\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Background<\/strong><\/p>\n Having claimed vote rigging on October 15 and subsequently announced a boycott of the November 8 presidential runoff, CDC staged a \u201cpeace vigil\u201d 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 \u201crowdy\u201d funeral procession.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cmove Liberia forward and promote the peace process\u201d, 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\u2019s comment about peace was a euphemism for the party\u2019s trading of violence for peace and that therefore, it was \u201cunfortunately insincere\u201d and a recipe for future conflict. But why?<\/p>\n Blackmail \u2013 for coalition or inclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt is a blackmail of the government and the trading of the people\u2019s plight for job,\u201d 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. \u201cIf 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s reported demand upon the Sirleaf Administration for jobs as precondition for calling off its obstruction of postwar Liberia\u2019s peace and reconciliation and democratization processes. \u201cThere are two things wrong with the reported demands,\u201d said survey respondent Jeremy Gayflor of Jacob\u2019s Town in Paynesville. \u201cHonoring it would mean either that President Sirleaf was bribing CDC into silence, which confirms the party\u2019s claims that NEC rigged the elections in UP\u2019s favor.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cdo-nothing, loud-mouthed radicals\u201d it resorted to violent confrontation to gain relevance and use it as bargaining chip. \u201cIf 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,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Sirleaf Administration yields to CDC\u2019s blackmail, it would have itself to blame if conditions and governance in the country degenerated into decadence mode,\u201d concurred a legal practitioner and former civil society delegate to the 2003 Accra peace talks, who preferred to remain anonymous. At the two-month-long dialogues, he said, delegates divided the government, suspended the constitution, and flew to Monrovia to loot the nation\u2019s resources as the poor, war-dispossessed watched helplessly. He said the national transition government that they formed ended up the most corrupt, \u201cfree-for-all party\u201d of a peace arrangement, the nation had even known. \u201cNo 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 \u2013 LURD, MODEL, civil society, and Taylor administration, etc.,\u201d he claimed. He conceded that the NTGL would be different in several ways from the Sirleaf Administration, but he noted that Tubman\u2019s demand for nominating powers bears resemblance to NTGL.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Sirleaf gives Tubman nominating power, would it not be prudent that she also give him removal power if he so demands?\u201d 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\u2019s interest. \u201cIs that the kind of governance quicksand that the president is pulling her administration onto in the name of peace dialogue?\u201d wondered Daniel Joyblah, who claimed to be UP partisan. Cllr. Tubman called the negotiations \u201cpeace sacrifice\u201d, discounting critics\u2019 claims that his party was trading violence for peace.<\/p>\n He however did not do a great job of a denial. \u201cI 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,\u201d 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. \u201cThe 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,\u201d Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Badio told reporters Monday.\u00a0 Mr. Badio gave no details.<\/p>\n When it was put to CDC\u2019s activist spokesman, George Solo, that his party was betraying the trust of the Liberian people by demanding jobs, he retorted, \u201cWe are not begging for jobs\u201d. Observers say the contextual difference would not matter as to the intent, if \u201cnot begging for job\u201d was simply the antithesis of \u201cdemanding job\u201d or \u201cblackmailing for jobs\u201d. Up to press time last night, this paper could not confirm the exact nature of CDC\u2019s reported violence-for-job deal, but statements attributed to President Sirleaf yesterday, during separate\u00a0 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, \u201cOne party cannot develop the country\u201d.<\/p>\n The statement could mean that the president is considering forming a government of inclusion, which many say is acceptable. \u201cBut 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,\u201d said university economics graduate Martha Tarlu of Sinkor. 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. \u201cRemember, CDC has no monopoly over violence,\u201d she said. Analysts say while observers\u2019 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 \u201cpeace dialogue\u201d today does not set the agenda for future bickering.<\/p>\n AllAfrica – All the Time<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
According to him, delegates at the negotiations chose to subordinate discussions on the conditions that plunged Liberia into war to talks about dividing the \u201cnational cake\u201d. \u201cThere 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,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cFirst, 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\u00a0 welfare of party appointees, who might or might not work in the interest of the government or the Liberian people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n