Freetown — Professor Amos Claudius Sawyer was born to Abel Sawyer and Sarah Sawyer in 1945; his siblings include, Joe Sawyer. The Sawyers were a prominent Americo-Liberian family.

He holds a B.A. in history and government from the University of Liberia, Monrovia, and masters and doctoral degrees in political science from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He lately served as Associate Director and Research Scholar, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.

Prof Sawyer is currently Chairman of the Governance Reform Commission in Liberia, which has recently become the Governance Commission. He has written extensively on conflict resolution and governance challenges in Africa and has been active in conflict resolution and democratisation initiatives in many African countries. His book, Beyond Plunder: Toward Democratic Governance in Liberia, was published in the spring of 2005. He supported Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in the October 2005 elections.

The democratic enthusiast began as staff member in 1968 and then became professor of political science in the 1970s. At the University of Liberia, Sawyer served as director of the Institute of Research and as dean of the College of Social Science and Humanities. He was the chairman of Liberia's constitution drafting commission in early 1980s and headed the first interim government of Liberia during the outbreak of violent conflict in early 1990s.

In 2001, he headed the Organization of African Unity (now African Union) mission to oversee Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections. He has also led consultancy missions for several United Nations agencies involved in peace-building in African conflicts. Sawyer's current research investigates the possibilities of attaining local self-governance in Africa's democratisation processes.

Before that he had returned to Liberia in mid-1990 and in late August during an emergency conference in The Gambia, he was voted interim president of the National Unity of Liberia. Bishop Roland Diggs was voted vice-president by a delegation of 35 Liberians representing seven political parties and eleven interest groups that gathered for that purpose. Beginning October 1990, he was installed in office at a conference sponsored by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a sixteen-nation group attempting to keep peace in Liberia.

His was supposed to rule for at most six months but his appointment was extended to four years during the civil war fought against rebels led largely by Charles Taylor, Prince Johnson, and David Nimley. When Sawyer accepted the presidency of Liberia in 1990, he did so intending to hold office just long enough to restore peace in what had become one of the most violent places on earth. But six months became four years. Attempts on Sawyer's life were frequent. And everywhere, every minute, was war.

But Sawyer is all too familiar with the abuses of the three regimes that have blocked Liberia's progress toward peace for the past 33 years.

"We've had this escalation," Sawyer explained. "Under Tolbert, there was torture, a lack of due process, and arbitrary arrest. Under Doe, those became more frequent. Charles Taylor brought to Liberia the greatest tragedy in its history." As a professor at the University of Liberia in the 1970s, he was a vocal opponent of William Tolbert, who suppressed calls for a new constitution. When Samuel Doe overthrew Tolbert in 1980, he hired Sawyer to draft the country's constitution. In 1984 when Sawyer became critical of the way his new boss was running the country, Doe had him imprisoned for several months. The move sparked serious student unrest at the University of Liberia and the professor was released, but he was kept under virtual house arrest for two years. Finally, in desperation, he left his native country in 1986.

Unfortunately, Doe had resorted to the same tactics that had characterised Tolbert's regime. According to Denis Johnson in Esquire, Doe 'ruled in a way generally agreed to have been both stupid and cruel." Those who dared to speak against the arrogant and corrupt leader were arrested. At least one coup attempt failed, and its instigator was hacked to pieces publicly.

Sawyer became one of the few brave public figures to criticize Doe. In the mid-1980s he founded the Liberian People's Party, a group calling for honest elections and fiscal responsibility among Liberia's leadership. He commanded power and respect in Monrovia, especially among the young students at the university there, and Doe moved swiftly to quash opposition from his former colleague.

Sawyer moved to the United States. There, with other dissidents, he formed an activist group, the Association for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia (ACDL). The ACDL began an effective lobby among American politicians, alerting them to human rights violations and fiscal irresponsibility in Liberia.

In a 1989 interview for Africa Report, Sawyer called Doe's administration "a gangster regime, a plundering regime," adding: "It is not, in spite of Doe's own rhetoric, a pro-capitalist or a pro-free enterprise regime. It plunders both the labor unions and the companies. We do not have a constitutional civilian government. We have a continuation of military rule, with some modifications here and there." Even as he and his colleagues lobbied in Washington, Sawyer realized that only Liberians could solve their country's problems. He did alert the United States to the misuse of American funds in Liberia, however, and he helped to lessen and eventually halt American economic aid to Liberia. "We want to be able to provide information about Liberia, the other side of the story, to keep Mr. Doe and his regime perceived in the perspective that they should be perceived," Sawyer told Africa Report. "We'd like to strengthen the commitment to the democratic process." Interestingly, American involvement in Liberia's tragedy was virtually nonexistent, despite the long history of cooperation between the two countries.

As Johnson wrote: "Liberians don't know that most Americans couldn't guess on which of the seven continents they actually reside, that images of their war have rarely been shown on U.S. television, that their troubles have scarcely been mentioned on U.S. radio... They can't understand why the Americans won't send in troops, or ... offer to host peace talks. They don't understand that among Americans they have no constituency, that even among black congressmen they have few advocates. They don't know why the Americans are making them wait." One Liberian--Amos Sawyer--is neither surprised by the American apathy nor particularly concerned about it. "Nowhere in this scheme {of} things {do} the Liberian people fit in," Sawyer told Africa Report. "Well, that's the hard reality. Liberians have always had this bias in favor of the United States, and sometimes expected much more of the United States than perhaps they should. Liberians should realize that they're on their own, and I think that's a good thing. Nobody else is going to solve our problems for us."