IPNEWS – The ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) of President George Manneh Weah Saturday, August 5, officially began its campaign activities for the October 10th Presidential and Legislative Elections, by employing one of its tactics that inarguably made them loose their first chance of ever ascending to state power in 2005.
Earlier on Saturday, CDC partisans were seen marching on the principal streets of Monrovia with a wooden casket on which they had partially covered with the pictures of former Vice President Joseph Nyuma Boakai, who is the standard bearer and Political Leader of the former ruling Unity Party. They sang funeral songs as they marched with the coffin in which they said contained the dead remains of Ambassador Boakai. The coffin was seen mainly being toted by young men, who were cladded in CDC red and blue berets and party t-shirts having both President Weah and his running mate, Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor’s pictures.
Even though, it was a rainy day, the CDC young men and women of its “Revolutionary National Youth Brigade” didn’t seem to mind to cold weather or the rains as they marched, chanted and sang the fictional death of the Unity Party’s political leader.
When they got before their party headquarters in Congotown, they lowered the casket on the main road. Some were seen mimicking people wailing for their loved one who had passed. They even chanted political slogans over the casket.
Their action on the main street, seriously impeded the free movements of vehicles and other passersby, who had no business with their political activities. They had all the unused space within their party’s compound but chose to block the main street.
The 79-year-old former Vice President is seen as the major rival and threat to unseat the CDC’s standard bearer, President Weah, who is a little over 20 years his junior.
Did They Violate The Revised Farmington River Declaration
Way ahead of the official campaign activities, leaders of political parties and independent candidates met with the NEC and signed a declaration in which they vowed themselves to a process that will be void of violence and other vices of bad electoral process.
This newspaper can’t establish whether the action of those CDC partisans in anyway or form violated the Revised Farmington River Declaration 2023. However, #4 of the “Guiding Principles” of the Declaration, political parties’ leaders committed themselves to an orderly and peaceful election process in 2023.
Under “Campaign Management” in the Declaration, it is stated in point #3: “Avoid using language at campaigns that is inflammatory or defamatory. Refrain from using language that threatens or incites violence in any forms against any other political parties, coalitions/collaborations, alliances, person, or group of persons.”
UP Response
Mr. Mohammed Ali, former Secretary General of UP and now a political officer in the Office of UP’s Standard Bearer, told this newspaper that the party won’t dignify with an official response to what CDC started on Saturday.
Former Unity Party Secretary General Mohammed Ali and former Vice President Joseph Nyuma Boakai“We are not going to dignify what they did with a response. Let them go ahead. We are a clean party. We have always run a clean campaign in all the elections that we have taken part in. CDC knows that it is going to lose the elections so they want to start electoral violence.”
Ali stated that they in the UP are way more sophisticated to be drawn in what CDC has started. “We will run a clean campaign and we will win in the first round,” he declared.
The former Vice President is not in the country at the moment. He is away in the US. He is expected to be in the country on Monday, August 7, 2023.
18 Others Are Vying
Mr. Weah and Amb. Boakai are not the only two contesting for the nation’s highest office. The National Elections Commission (NEC) has given the green light to 18 others, who have thrown their hats in the race to unseat President Weah. Not much can be mentioned of the 18 others, including Mr. Alexander Benedict Cummings, a former Coca-Cola Executive and Human Rights lawyer Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe.
