By Musa Hassan Bility
This week, I want to talk about HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS.
Not political alliances. Not endorsements. Not visits. Not telephone calls. Human relationships.
I am increasingly troubled by the belief that political disagreement must become personal hatred. In Liberia today, people judge your political loyalty by whom you visit, whose telephone call you answer, whom you call a friend, and whose family remains close to yours.
We are gradually losing something more important than any election. We are losing our humanity.
One of the core reasons the Citizens Movement for Change was founded was to help change this kind of politics. CMC was founded on the conviction that we can take an independent and honest look at Liberian politics. We can disagree philosophically, politically, and on policy without destroying our culture, our family relationships, our friendships, or our respect for one another.
This belief did not begin with CMC. It has defined my political life from the beginning.
I was introduced to politics in August 1990, during the formation of the Interim Government led by Dr. Amos Sawyer. The late Clifford L. Flemister first introduced me to the late Sheik Kafumba Konneh, and through them I came to know Dr. Sawyer.
Those men taught me one of the earliest and most important lessons of my life: people can disagree deeply and still preserve the human relationship.
That lesson stayed with me throughout the civil war.
I watched Liberians who had once lived together, eaten together, and called one another family take opposing sides and turn against each other. Friends and relatives became enemies. People who had shared communities and histories killed one another.
That experience convinced me never to participate in the war, regardless of how dangerous it became, how closely it touched my life, or what happened to my family.
I understood that when politics, grievance, ethnicity, and the struggle for power are separated from our humanity, they can consume an entire country.
As I entered mainstream politics, I repeatedly tested this principle.
During President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s administration, Edwin Snowe, who is one of my closest friends. At the time, he was at odds with the government, and there were determined efforts to remove him as Speaker.
Some people expected me to prove my loyalty by abandoning my friendship with Edwin. I refused.
I respected President Sirleaf and was loyal to her, but I would not let political conflict determine whom I could call my friend. I give President Sirleaf credit because she understood and acknowledged that distinction.
My friendship with George Weah also goes back many years through football.
When he became President, I was a full member of the Liberty Party. I wanted Counselor Charles Walker Brumskine to become President. I did not join President Weah’s government, and I did not become an active supporter of his administration. I remained in the opposition.
Yet some of the same people who are in power today tried to portray my friendship with George Weah as political support for his government. They questioned my loyalty, attacked my character, and damaged my reputation because I refused to treat a longtime friend as an enemy.
I paid a political price for that position, but I refused to allow anyone to choose my friends for me.
The same thing happened when I met Alexander Cummings.
I listened to him. I understood what he stood for, and I believed we shared important values about leadership, competence, accountability, and Liberia’s future. I decided to support him.
That relationship also created serious political difficulties for me. People who opposed Mr. Cummings attacked me, questioned my motives, and tried to destroy what we were building.
We experienced difficulties within our political parties and among our supporters, but Mr. Cummings and I preserved our relationship. Our families also maintained their relationship. That is how politics should be.
This week, some friends in the opposition questioned whether I had recently visited President Joseph Nyuma Boakai and whether I had visited Vice President Jeremiah Kpan Koung.
The questions were not simply expressions of curiosity. They carried an accusation.
My answer is simple. While it is true that I didn’t visit President Boakai or have any such plan, I owe no political actor an apology if I ever did.
A visit is not an endorsement. A telephone conversation is not a coalition. Friendship is not political surrender. Courtesy is not betrayal.
I am not a member of this government. I do not belong to the Unity Party, and I do not support this administration’s political direction. I intend to work democratically to replace it and offer the Liberian people a better alternative.
But the Vice President and I know each other. We come from the same geographical part of Liberia, and we carry the same traditional title in Nimba. Those cultural and human bonds do not disappear because we belong to different political parties.
We disagree politically. We will compete for power. I’m working to democratically unseat the government he serves while still respecting our human relationship.
No supporter, opponent, political party, or commentator will determine whom I can visit, speak with, or call a friend.
This is where Liberian politics has lost its way.
Instead of debating policies, competence, jobs, education, healthcare, roads, justice, corruption, and the cost of living, we spend our time monitoring whose home someone visited and whose telephone call someone answered.
Everything has become personal.
Everything has become suspicious. Everything has become an attempt to destroy someone else.
Even educated people who should elevate our national conversation now define political loyalty through visits, friendships, photographs, and telephone conversations.
This is why policy has disappeared from our politics.
It is also why political power in Liberia increasingly feels like a matter of life and death.
When people in government believe that losing power will mean humiliation, persecution, imprisonment, or the destruction of everything they have, they will look for every possible way to remain in power.
When people in opposition believe that winning gives them the right to punish everyone associated with the defeated government, politics becomes revenge.
A healthy democracy must make it safe to lose. The winner must be able to govern without vengeance. The loser must be able to accept defeat, return home with dignity, reorganize, and compete again.
This is not an argument against accountability. Anyone who violates the law must answer under the law. But accountability must come through independent institutions, due process, and equal justice. It must never become an instrument of political revenge.
Friendship must never provide immunity from the law, but opposition must never require enmity.
CMC was founded to model a different political culture.
We will criticize what is wrong, support what is right, and offer alternatives wherever we disagree.
We will protect our independence and our identity, but we will not build our movement around hatred.
We will not ask Liberians to abandon their families, communities, traditions, and friendships to prove their political loyalty.
Some people will misunderstand this. Some will weaponize every photograph, every visit, and every conversation. They are free to do so.
I have lived through too much and learned from too many people to surrender this conviction now.
If preserving my human relationships costs me political support, alliances, votes, or even my political ambition, so be it.
No political office is worth losing my humanity.
I will disagree without hatred. I will oppose without dehumanizing. I will preserve friendships without surrendering my principles. I will stand for accountability without supporting vengeance.
That is the politics I have tried to practice since 1990. That is the politics CMC must represent. And that is the contribution I hope to make toward changing our country.
Political opponents do not have to become enemies.
When the campaigns end, when governments change, and when today’s winners eventually become tomorrow’s opposition, we will still be Liberians.
We will still need one another.
Have a pleasant new week.