George Weah's victory in the 2017 presidential election was a watershed moment in Liberian history. It marked the first time an opposition party had triumphed over a ruling party, a significant event in Liberia's long and tumultuous journey towards democracy.
Six years later, Joe Boakai would flip the coin, winning an unprecedented victory over a previously immensely popular President seeking a 2nd term as President. Boakai's victory was remarkable, and Liberians should rightly rejoice over the maturity of their democracy.
Yet many Liberians are disillusioned with the lack of democratic dividends to improve their lives. How did we get here?
The fight for multiparty democracy in Liberia has been a long and Sisyphean quest, starting from the earliest formation of Liberia. The first active political party in Liberia was the True Liberia Party, founded soon after Liberia's independence in 1848. This party, later to become the Republican Party, was a party of the mulatto elite and cream of the crop of then-Liberian society, counting President Joseph Jerkins Roberts and Stephen Allen Benson as its fathers.
However, a disconnect between the ruling elite of conservative businesspeople and those primarily of the more agrarian class and darker-skinned settlers along the St. Paul River and upriver settlements led to the formation of the True Whips Party.
This party, which ironically put forward Edward James Roye, a highly successful businessman, as their candidate in 1876, catapulted the TWP into the echelons of political power in Liberia for more than 100 years, functioning virtually as a single ruling party until the violent coup of 1980 forcefully removed President William R. Tolbert and the True Whigs Party from power.
Even during the heyday of the TWP in Liberia, courageous individuals struggled to give the Liberian people more than a single choice when it came to governing the country. In 1927, Thomas Faulkner launched a spirited albeit futile bid to defeat President C.D.B. King through elections.
Astonishingly, CDB King won the elections with 230,000 votes, compared to Faulkner's 9000 votes. At the time, there were only 19,000 votes in Liberia. So where did the other more than 210,000 votes come from? (No wonder this election made it to the Guinness World Record for election fraud).
Didho Tweh attempted in 1951 to challenge Tubman, but he (D. Tweh) would soon be sent into exile to Sierra Leone, charged with sedition. Four years later, in 1955, relations between former President Edwin Barclay, the erudite former President and his one-time protégé, Willam V.S. Tubman had broken down so severely that the older man (Barclay) came out of retirement to compete against his successor. The 1955 elections brought tension to the nation.
President W.V.S. Tubman of the ruling True Whigs Party won with an impractical 99.51 % to former President Edwin Barclay of the Independent True Whigs Party's 0.48 % in the 1955 elections.
President Tubman and his party would maintain a stranglehold on Liberian politics through coercion (stick), persuasion (carrot), finances, reward and power to opponents to silence them. The desire for competitive elections and multichoice in elections would take a back seat until the more liberal rule of William R. Tolbert in the early 1970s.
The Movement for Justice (MOJA) of economics professor Togba Nah Tipoteh emerged as a Pan-African pressure group with Marxist inclinations to challenge the TWP in 1973. In 1975, the Progressive Alliance of Liberia also emerged as a pressure group led by Gabriel Baccus Mathews.
PAL later became Liberia's first registered opposition party, the Progressive People Party. Unfortunately, before the PPP could challenge the TWP in the polls, the violent interdiction of the 1980 coup brought the People Redemption Council military junta to power. The 1985 election, although it had more than one political party, was neither free nor fair.
Fast forward to the 1997 elections. Charles Taylor, a rebel leader turned politician, would win the 1997 elections with 75% of the popular vote. Taylor and his National Patriotic Party (NPP) won the 1997 elections, with his (Taylor's) victory reflecting the people's will. But many voted out of fear that if Charles Taylor did not win the elections, he would return to war (something Liberians did not want); furthermore, flushed with cash from the war years, Taylor had the resources to mount an effective campaign.
Compared to previous elections, Liberia's last two elections have been free, fair and transparent. Just recently, we saw the emergence of Liberia's newest political party, the Citizens Movement for Change (CMC) of Musa Bility, which became Liberia's newest political party, bringing the number of political parties in Liberia to 24. If the strength of a country's political democracy is measured in terms of the number of political parties, Liberia would be in the 1% of democratic countries in the world.
After all, the United States of America has two major political parties: the Republican and Democratic Parties. In the United Kingdom (the world's oldest parliamentary democracy), there are two main political parties, the Conservative and Labor Party, with the Liberal Democratic Party being the distant third party. In Australia, the two main political parties are the Liberal and Labor parties. But small Liberia has 24 parties, which is an astounding feat.
For the record, most Liberian political parties are centered around the political leader. There is nothing much in terms of ideology or platform that separates one party from the other. Most parties are moribund (dying or slowly dying) until elections suffice. Even parties that produced Presidents die as soon as the standard bearer is no longer in power. Where is President Samuel Doe's NDPL? Where is the National Patriotic Party (NPP) of Charles Taylor?
Liberian political parties aim to win the Presidency and divide the spoils of war through Presidential appointments. No wonder Liberians are disillusioned. In his book, The Years the Locust Have Eaten: Liberia 1816-2004 pg. 320-325, Historian Joseph Tellewoyan reminds us that when Edward James Roye became President, he realized that most of Liberia's revenues were spent on recurrent expenditures, with 45% spent on government salaries.
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Fast forward to 2025, most of Liberia's budget is spent on recurrent expenses (Not just a Unity Party government issue); around 87% is spent on wages, scratch cards, and the servicing of accrued debts. Little money is spent on investments for future roads, electricity, bridges, schools, agriculture, and other things that directly benefit the citizens.
No wonder more than 77% of young Liberians would leave Liberia for greener pastures abroad when given a choice (According to an Afro-barometer survey published in FPA December 2024). If democracy involves many political parties with politicians making huge salaries, then Liberia is a clear winner.
In that case, Liberians yearning for a democratic dividend that improves the lives of the ordinary people through investments in the people and infrastructure have a long time to wait, or else the country's cherished gains of multiparty democracy and its supposed benefits are meaningless to the pen-pen riders, the market women, the hustlers, the young graduates looking for jobs and the journalists clamoring for change and truth.
Nemen Martin Kpahn is a Liberian currently residing in Australia. He holds a master's degree in communication from Griffith University and a Master of Science degree in research from the University of Southern Queensland. Kpahn is pursuing a PhD at the University of Southern Queensland and writes regularly on Liberian politics and society.
