Bility: Opposition Not CDC’s -CMC leader rejects CDC opposition monopoly

MONROVIA – The opposition’s unity push has run into a pointed challenge from within its own ranks. Musa Hassan Bility leads the Citizens Movement for Change (CMC). He rejects any claim that opposition belongs to the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC). In an open letter to CDC partisans, he accuses the former ruling party of dodging a reckoning over its 2023 defeat. He cites the removal of a Supreme Court Associate Justice and the ouster of Speaker J. Fonati Koffa. Those episodes, he argues, helped hand the Unity Party unchecked power. Bility insists that his own presidential ambition is neither betrayal nor collaboration with government. Unity, he suggests, must begin with accountability, as THE ANALYST reports.

Hon. Musa Hassan Bility, Political Leader of the Citizens Movement for Change (CMC), has rejected what he described as an attempt by the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) to claim ownership of Liberia’s political opposition, declaring that opposition “is not the property of any one political party.”

 In an open letter addressed to the leaders, officials, partisans and supporters of the CDC, Bility stated that being in opposition does not mean supporting the CDC and that he has every constitutional and democratic right to aspire to the presidency of Liberia.

Bility noted that many of his closest friends are members of the CDC and that he has stood with the party at decisive moments in Liberia’s political history.

He disclosed that although the CDC has never been his first choice in the first round of a presidential election, he chose the CDC on the two occasions when the second-round choice was between the CDC and the Unity Party, led by then Ambassador Joseph Nyuma Boakai.

He made that decision twice and has no regrets, he said, which is why he finds the hostility now being directed toward him deeply troubling.

No Reckoning Over 2023 Defeat

The CDC governed Liberia for six years and lost the 2023 presidential election, Bility recalled, yet there appears to be no serious internal reckoning over the failures that contributed to that defeat.

According to him, there has been no comprehensive evaluation of what went wrong, no honest discussion about what should have been done differently, and no willingness to acknowledge mistakes or apologize to the Liberian people where an apology may be warranted.

Instead, the CMC leader argued, others are being told that to be considered opposition, one must support the CDC. Under that thinking, he contended, opposition is no longer a political position or a commitment to holding the government accountable but has become an identity owned and controlled by one political party. “I reject that definition completely,” Bility declared.

The CMC, Bility explained, believes that Liberia is heading in the wrong direction under the Unity Party government, but also believes that the only alternative to the Unity Party cannot automatically be a return to the CDC.

Many Liberians, he maintained, believe that neither the Unity Party nor the CDC presently represents the transformation the country requires, and they have every right to seek a new political direction.

The CMC has every right to present its vision to the Liberian people, Bility asserted. “That aspiration is not a crime.

It is not a betrayal. It does not make me an ally of the Unity Party,” he wrote, adding that if his CDC friends truly regard him as a friend, they should be prepared to listen when he raises difficult questions. Friendship, he argued, cannot mean that he must abandon his convictions, surrender his political ambition or remain silent about the failures of the past.

Questions Over Supreme Court Removal

Before there can be serious talk about opposition unity, Bility insisted, there must be a willingness to discuss the record of the former government and the conduct of the opposition since 2024.

He pointed out that the CDC made consequential decisions while in power, including the removal of a sitting Associate Justice of the Supreme Court under circumstances that remain deeply controversial.

“Does the CDC now believe that decision was wrong? Would it act differently if confronted with a similar situation in the future? Is it prepared to acknowledge the injury caused and apologize where necessary?” Bility asked.

These questions matter, he said, because a party seeking to return to power must tell the Liberian people whether it has learned from the exercise and loss of power.

Refusing to discuss them, according to Bility, creates the impression that everything the CDC did was correct and that its intention is merely to return to power and continue from where it stopped. “I am sorry, but I cannot be part of such an arrangement,” he stated.

Speaker Koffa’s Removal Revisited

Bility also called for an honest discussion about what happened in the Legislature. The 2023 elections, he observed, produced an important democratic balance, with the Unity Party winning the Executive Branch while opposition lawmakers held sufficient strength to lead and provide meaningful checks within the Legislature. In the Senate, he noted, opposition senators had the numbers but lacked the unity and discipline to elect their own leadership.

In the House of Representatives, the opposition succeeded in electing a Speaker, Bility recalled.

Yet, he charged, senior figures within the CDC later joined forces with the Unity Party’s political machinery to remove Speaker J. Fonati Koffa. That decision, he argued, helped destroy the balance of power created by the Liberian electorate, weakened the opposition, compromised legislative independence and strengthened the Unity Party’s control over the state.

According to the CMC leader, the consequences are now before the country. Legislative oversight has been weakened, the Legislature remains unaudited, and serious concerns about drugs, financial mismanagement, public accountability and alleged misappropriation across government are met with insufficient scrutiny, he claimed. The Executive, Bility added, faces no effective institutional check.

The unchecked power the Unity Party enjoys today did not emerge on its own, Bility maintained, but was made possible, in part, by the acquiescence and participation of influential people within the CDC.

“How, then, can we sit together to discuss an opposition strategy while declaring these matters forbidden from discussion?” he asked.

Opposition unity, he declared, cannot be built upon selective memory, cannot demand loyalty from others while refusing accountability for its own actions, and cannot ask Liberians to forget yesterday merely because it wants to reclaim power tomorrow.

Business Losses Over Koffa Stand

Bility disclosed that his support for Koffa became the dividing line between him and the Unity Party government. Because of the position he took, he said, his business suffered enormously, with nearly 60 percent of it taken away, and he was insulted, called a criminal and subjected to every imaginable accusation.

As an organization, the CDC did not stand up for him, Bility noted, stressing that he mentions this not because the CDC owed him anything but to place the present hostility in its proper context.

He said he stood on principle when it was costly, took the attacks and accepted the consequences. Yet today, he lamented, some of the same people whose interests were defended now treat him as an enemy simply because he refuses to surrender his own political vision.

Bility dismissed as false the accusation by some CDC supporters that he is a collaborator of the government. “I have never declared support for the Unity Party, and I have absolutely no intention of doing so,” he stated.

Ironically, he argued, it is some within the CDC who have cooperated with the Unity Party when it suited their political interests, including in the removal of the Speaker, yet they now question the opposition credentials of anyone who refuses to submit to the CDC.

Opposition ‘Is Not Ownership’

“Opposition is not ownership. It is not a private title held by one party,” Bility wrote. “It is a democratic responsibility shared by all citizens and institutions prepared to challenge the government, defend accountability, and offer the country a credible alternative.”

He then posed a series of questions to the former ruling party. “Where does the CDC stand on auditing the Legislature? Where does it stand on genuine financial transparency? Where does it stand on legislative independence? Where does it stand on the mistakes of its six years in power? What has it learned? What does it regret? What will it do differently if entrusted with power again?” he asked. These, Bility insisted, are not insults but legitimate questions that every serious political party seeking another opportunity to govern must be prepared to answer.

Bility said he remains proud of the position taken by the CMC, whose fight, he explained, is not simply against the Unity Party or the CDC but against bad governance, corruption, abuse of power, institutional weakness and the culture of impunity, regardless of who commits it. The party will oppose these practices when they come from the Unity Party, when they come from the CDC and even within its own ranks, he pledged, because its commitment must be to Liberia, not to the colors, symbols or personalities of any political organization.

Across the country, Bility asserted, many Liberians are prepared to join this fight in the belief that neither the Unity Party nor the CDC, in their present forms, can lead Liberia toward the new beginning its people deserve. He described that as a legitimate political philosophy and a growing national conviction.

“We are not asking anyone for permission to believe it. We are not asking anyone for permission to organize around it. And we will not apologize for presenting the Liberian people with a new political alternative,” he declared.

‘Welcome to the Game’

Addressing his friends in the CDC, Bility stated that political disagreement does not have to destroy personal relationships, but friendship cannot require submission, cooperation cannot demand silence, and unity cannot mean surrendering convictions or abandoning a vision.

“If my decision to seek the presidency and offer Liberia a different path means that the CDC has chosen to enter into a political war with me, then I am prepared for that political fire,” he warned.

“If you consider our political philosophy a threat and have decided to fight it, then welcome to the game. We are here. We are prepared,” Bility wrote. He noted that he has endured insults, intimidation, economic pressure and political isolation before, and vowed not to abandon his convictions because some believe that the presidency is the exclusive inheritance of two parties or two individuals.

The Liberian people, Bility concluded, will ultimately decide which vision offers them the best path forward through ideas, policies, records, character and the sovereign power of the ballot box, not through insults, intimidation or attempts to monopolize the opposition. “And to those who believe they can hunt down every independent voice, remember this: The jungle also contains those who hunt the hunter,” he cautioned, adding that the contest would be met “on the democratic battlefront, the battlefield of ideas, leadership, character, and the sovereign votes of the Liberian people.”