IPNEWS: The pair ran on the same ticket in 2016 and became president and vice president of the Press Union of Liberia, PUL, respectively.
Charles Coffee was President and Octavin Williams, Vice President.
Both men, Charles, a conservative, and Williams, fire burn, were best of friends until 2019 when they became political opponents as the vice president decided to run against the president apparently due to ideological differences and differences in style of leadership at the level of the PUL.
They dared not see each other eye to eye, neither walk on the same ground as their rivalry deepened to unmeasurable proportions although Mr. Coffey said at no time did, they keep speech.
Their respective supporters and admirers were also embroiled in the brouhaha that almost split the journalists’ union as Williams and his supporters boycotted the 2019 elections on allegations that Coffey and his team had bloated the voters’ role with an intent to rig the process, an allegation that the Coffey’s camp denied.
Still disappointed in the manner in which he thinks the Press Union was proceeding under Coffey’s leadership, Williams initiated the formation of a developmental journalist organization, styled “the Society of Liberian Journalists, SLJ,” which is officially registered in Liberia by the government and its focuses mainly on rights advocacy.
On Friday, 23rd September 2022, Coffey, whose tenure as president of the journalists’ union will be expiring in November this year, extended an olive branch to Williams and said, “Let bygones be bygones.”
“Rumors that Octavin and I were not speaking to each other were untrue”, Mr. Coffey said during the reconciliatory meeting held at a local entertainment center in Central Monrovia.
Mr. Williams in remarks said disagreements between two friends or among friends are a natural phenomenon that is inevitable but can be resolved.
“Charles and I cannot jeopardize our long-standing relationship because of Press Union politics. I stood in his wedding and made him to know Rhodoxon Fayiah,” Williams said at the brief ceremony witnessed by the Secretary General of the PUL, Musa Kanneh, Assistant Secretary, Aquoi Baysah, and other members of the Union. The pair shook hands, hugged each other and knocked glasses as a sign of peace and reconciliation.
Last Friday’s peace talks between the PUL’s outgoing President, Charles Coffey and his former Vice President, Octavin Williams, took place less than two months to the Union’s next elections in November this year. Writes David N. Targbe
