4 November 2009
Ambassador George Manneh Weah, having appeared dogged in his academic pursuits, has promised to hold a big graduation party in West Point, on the field on which he started plying his foot-balling career.
Weah, regarded in most quarters as the most popular youthful politician in post-conflict Liberia, did not say when he will be walking out of the doors of the University or talked about what he is reading, but noted that West Point being a community he grew in, he would return home upon graduation to celebrate a graduation party with the people of the community, which is considered as one of the slums in Monrovia.
Weah is currently working on his first degree in Florida, United States of America, and is not bogged down by abhorrence and skepticism, observers say.
Ambassador Weah, first partisan of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), is in town to show solidarity with the party's candidate, Geraldine Doe-Sheriff for the pending November 10, 2009 Senatorial By-election for Montserrado County. Weah spoke on Monday November 2, 2009, in the suburb of West Point to thousands of CDC partisans and other well-wishers in continuation of the ongoing campaign.
Thousands of citizens of West Point and adjacent areas in their numbers thronged the West Sports Field, the field on which Weah played football in his teenage, to show support to the party he played a pivotal role in establishing.
Juxtaposing the significance of education to that of intelligence as it relates to the character of the candidates in the race, he said, the two are very important but at the same time, he observed that one can have intelligence without necessarily having formal theoretical education.
According to him, the issue of education and intelligence, at one point time, took center stage at the University he is currently attending, and that his professor and other students agreed that education was far more less than intelligence. Like other students might have done, Ambassador Weah told thousands of enthusiastic crowd who cheered endlessly referring to him as "Obama", that he did not rush to answer questions, but rather, he thought for a wide and prepared a two-sentence statement for the professor.
In the statement, he said, he told the professor about his grandmother who never had any formal education but was able to calculate, distinguish between issues and was able to advise him and others about the way of life, adding that his professor later agreed with him that one cannot be formally educated but intelligent.
"I know that education is important. That is an undeniable fact, but I also want to let you know that intelligence is not education and education is not intelligence" he said in a more relaxed and proscribed manner.
Judging why he decided to draw analogy between education and intelligence, something which seemed far from the campaign exercise, observers believe that he was simply hammering home an understanding that though some of the people beefed the field do not have formal education, yet they can use their God's-given intelligence to vote right or make a very sound decision at the polls that will be in the interest of the country.
The elections
Turning away from education and intelligence, the CDC marksman told his partisans, well-wishers and friends that the pending elections has certainly set the stage for the pending 2011 general and presidential elections as to how they will approach it and the government will perform its responsibility by creating a level plain field. He urged his supporters to vote in the CDC candidate because the slot in contention is theirs, as the late Senator Brent whose death created the vacancy was one of the staunch and reliable partisans of the party.
Ambassador Weah noted that what is unfolding regarding the by-election is different from the way it is done in other countries, pointing out that when someone passed off, the party of which they were part of is contacted to make nomination, but that is not the case in Liberia because the Constitution does not call for it.
He therefore, urged his partisans to show up on the day of elections to vote in the CDC's candidate, he wooed voters to do it for the good and betterment of the country because Aspirant Doe-sheriff is the most trusted candidate who can make a big difference.
Referring to the CDC as the most popular and grassroots institution, he reminded the crowd, some of whom were not partisans of the CDC, but showed up at the program to perhaps get a glimpse at him said "We are in the race today because we have decided to put the past behind us. What happened in 2005 is a history. We are here to begin a new page.
We have come to identify with you, to tell you to vote for the CDC because it is the party that is prepared to change your lives. Change will come; change is inevitable," he said and ended with Barrack Osama's popular saying "Yes, We Can." "Tell me! Since the past three to four years, has anything changed? Has there been any changed since then," he asked.
The Tarpeh Factor
Speaking in his native Kru vernacular, Ambassador Weah told the crowd that he did not come to condemn any of the candidates but in the same vein, made a notation of Professor Wilson K. Tarpeh, a Kru by tribe, and candidate of the Alliance for Peace and Democracy (APD) in the pending By-election.
In a tone characteristic of tribalism, the CDC Standard-bearer in the 2005 general and presidential elections, informed the people of West Point, most of whom are members of the Kru ethnic tribe that though Prof. Tarpeh "is part of us," yet he is learned.
Perhaps in a bid to expose the APD candidate, perhaps one of the most educated candidates in the race, Weah, former captain of the National Football Soccer Team, the Lone Star, said in 1993, Tarpeh while serving as Minister of Finance asked to charter a plane to take the team to Zaire, now Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Explaining in his native dialect, he said, he yielded the call, paid US$30,000 and took the team to play the game and that upon his return, he went to the former finance minister to request for "his lay thing." He claimed, Prof. Tarpeh turned around in his chair, looked in his face and said to him "my brother I am broke," but he did not say whether ended the issue. On the basis on this allegation, Weah wondered such a person, like Prof. Tarpeh is reliable to be voted into office.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Analyst. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
