allAfrica.com: Liberia: 2011 Election Faces Opposition Boycott, Unless... (Page 1 of 2)

Major donors and democratic institutions across the globe described the 2005 post-war presidential and legislative elections as the freest, fairest, and most democratic in Liberia's 158 years of electioneering.

The elections were organized and run by the National Elections Commission (NEC). Since then, these partners in Liberia's democratization process had been working frantically to upgrade and strengthen NEC for the 2011 general and presidential elections and things seemed to be moving smoothly.

But CDC's executive member Milton Teahjay believes there is more to the commission's progress than meet the ordinary eye and he has been speaking out on this and a number of other issues with admonition. The Analyst has been finding what is amiss.

Former Liberia's Deputy Information Minister and Executive of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), J, Milton Teahjay, says the most credible and larger opposition political parties in Liberia would be reluctant to participate in the 2011 general and presidential elections.

According to him, this is most likely unless the National Elections Commission (NEC) is significantly restructured with opposition parties' involvement to enhance its credibility.

He says with Mr. James Fromoyan and what he called "UP operatives and die-hards" at the helm of NEC, going into national elections would be to facilitate another international appointment of a President without domestic legitimacy and broad-based support to undertake substantive national reconstruction programs. He did not elaborate.

The CDC executive made the assertions and issued the admonition over the weekend when he appeared on Truth FM/TV with Presidential Press Secretary, Cyrus Badio and Assistant Minister-designate for International Organizations at the Foreign Ministry Alphonso Nimely.

He said the political association of NEC's national chairman, James Fromoyan, with and loyalty to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf over the years makes him particularly ineligible to referee a national competitive exercise without infusing his personal bias.

Mr. Teahjay then predicted that except for "briefcase opposition political parties that are already in the financial pockets of the Unity Party", the largest opposition parties in the country were not likely to submit themselves to elections with the current configuration of the National Election Commission.

He branded the recent saga between the Elections Commission and the Liberty Party a political persecution intended to silence one of the credible components of the opposition bloc.

Of the 22 registered political parties in the country, he claimed, only one party, the Unity Party supports Fromoyan chairmanship of NEC. The reason, he claimed further, was that President Sirleaf was guaranteed re-election only when Fromoyan and the cohorts are at the National Elections Commission run the affairs of the commission without the input of opposition political parties.

Responding to Teahjay's charges of the potential for gross partiality of the National Elections Commission under Mr. Fromoyan, Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Badio cautioned him against making sweeping allegations against one entity simply because of disagreement with its leader.

He said there was no evidence to indicate that Mr. Fromoyan had been partial in the past and there is no reason to believe that he would be partial in the future.

For his part, Assistant Foreign Minister Designate Alphonso Nimely said if Mr. Fromoyan was so discredited as claimed by Mr. Teahjay, why CDC Senators in the Liberian Senate did not voted to prevent him from being chairman of the National Elections Commission.

Mr. Nimely said although he respected Mr. Teahjay's rights to offer an opinion on any aspect of the government, he is concerned about the likelihood of his comments manifesting themselves in post- or pre-election violence in Liberia as was the case in Kenya recently.

Regarding the surge of armed robbery in the country, the CDC Executive repeated his warning on the eve of last Decoration Day that Liberia was drifting into a gangster's paradise under Mr. Sirleaf only because she and her immediate family were safe at night and the rest of the citizenry is left to perform vigilante functions to ensure personal security.

He then called for the immediate arming of the National Police to curb the upsurge of gangsterism in the country, terming "as inherently paradoxical" what he called the United Nations' refusal to arm the national police after recruiting, vetting and training the very police.

The CDC executive accused President Sirleaf of paying lip service to the issue of armed robbery in the country simply because, he claimed, she was enjoying state security protection.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories

Today's Most Active Stories