By: Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
Alexander Benedict Cummings, Jr. is a Liberian citizen who is seen by his determined political foes as an outsider, a carpetbagger in a country where he was born in 1956 to Liberian parents.
This is because like some of his opponents, Mr. Cummings is also aiming for the highest office in the land, the Liberian presidency.
As a Liberian who personally have encountered similar pushback in some corners because of my enormous political activities in the United States other than in Liberia where “the action is” and supposed to be as my detractors often would say, they argued that Alexander Cummings shouldn’t run for President of Liberia because he did not stay in Liberia when the country was on fire burning from the senseless civil war, and other violent political upheavals.
I guess since in their eyes he was absent during the nation’s political turmoils, and since he wasn’t put in jail for his political activities for his name to float around like a popularity contest when others stayed around and suffered the consequences, to them, they, not him should be rewarded with the office of president.
Well, on the issue regarding his absence during the heyday of those civil crises, which is the basis for the hostility towards him, I will refer his detractors to the residency clause (Article 52) of the amended 1986 Liberian Constitution.
Article 52:
“No person shall be eligible to hold the office of President or Vice-President unless that person is:
A natural-born Liberian citizen of not less than 35 years of age; b) the owner of unencumbered real property valued at not less than twenty-five dollars; and c) resident in the Republic ten years prior to his election, provided that the President and the Vice-President shall not come for the same County.”
Unless Mr. Cummings is in violation of the above clause, he is eligible to run for president. Period.
And if other would-be presidential candidates are in violation of this provision in the Liberian constitution, they should be held to the same standard.
So, if I wanted to oppose Mr. Cummings’ eligibility to run for President of Liberia, I would do my homework and consult constitutional experts to guide me and my opposition to Mr. Cummings’ eligibility to run for President of Liberia.
I will not get with some corrupt, wishy-washy Collaborating Political Parties’ partners – some of whom lacked credibility, to dig out some flimsy reasons to harass and deny him his rights to run for president of his country.
I addressed this simmering issue in 2021 in another article in the Liberian Dialogue this way:
“Former Vice President Joseph N. Boikai gave the speech of his political life during a turning over ceremony of the chairmanship of the Collaborating Political Party (CPP) at his Unity Party’s headquarters meant to separate him from a crowded field of ambitious ‘political leaders,’ and a key political rival Alexander B. Commings who was sidelined for his refusal to be a collaborating partner in this seesaw game of who wants to be President of Liberia.
Alexander B. Cummings, as we all know was accused by people within the CPP of tampering with a document that he and his Alternative National Congress (ANC) members denied doing for which he kinda purged himself unceremoniously out of a group that finally settled with the familiar face, Joseph N. Boakia, who has been sitting in the wing waiting to be President of Liberia since his stint as Vice President of Liberia under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf ended in 2018.
It is crystal clear all along that Cummings, the former US resident, and then-seasonal presidential candidate stood little or no chance of unseating the veteran Boakai who believed this is his time to be president since he’s the one who has been on the ground hunkering-down through thick and thin when Cummings and other aspiring presidential candidates were nowhere around.”
However, the nagging issue of Cummings tampering with some CPP documents is once again in the news in 2022, this time involving the nation’s top prosecutor Sayma Syrenius Cephus and others inserting themselves in the case and asking for jail time for a presidential candidate as if this is a national security matter that requires the intervention of the Supreme Court of Liberia.
No! it is not.
It is a civil case between disputed parties, political parties, regarding an agreement, duties, and responsibilities to the other party. A judge can decide which way to go or what to do to the losing party.
My problem with presidential candidate Alexander B. Cummings, if you seriously want to know is not about him allegedly tampering with some coalition document.
It is something else: his aloofness.
I have been a resident of metro Atlanta since the early 1980s, around the same time Mr. Cummings lived here and was in school as some of us did those days.
During that time when we organized our community and laid the groundwork for our community and our struggling selves, Mr. Cummings was conspicuously uninvolved with us and our efforts to grow.
Even when he was involved with Coca-Cola as a member of the management team, a top and influential one for that matter, Alexander B. Cummings was too big to come around Liberians in metro Atlanta.
Alexander B. Cummings did not mentor any of us in our community during those crucial days in our young lives and was missing in action.
Not until the 2000s after he realized that he had presidential ambitions for Liberia did he begin to come our way to our community meetings.
Alexander B. Cummings was now visible at community meetings when Leo Mulbah became President of the Liberian Association of Metropolitan Atlanta (LAMA) in 2012, and during the administration of Ysyndi-Martin Kpeyei, who became president of our community in her own right after the end of Mr. Mulbah’s term.
Those are reasons and perhaps other reasons I am skeptical of a Cummings presidency.
For me, too little too late.
To win my trust during his presidential candidacy, he must do more.
Note: The views and comments expressed and contained in this article are solely the writer and not the management decision of the Independent Probe Newspaper.
