THE COALITION FOR Democratic Change (CDC) for three days nursed the nostalgia of its members and supporters, and perhaps a larger section of the public, when they demonstrated what they are historically known for: deviant show of love and solidarity for a party they believe is supreme. The numbers were impressive. The speeches were loud and moving. The applauses were deafening. The hovering atmosphere submerged in blue seas. The rains, as well as its floods and cold, were even more patronizing. From Friday to Sunday (June 28 to 20), CDCians stormed Monrovia; they showed their naturally stubborn boldness to the odds, even the fresh wounds of a cataclysmic waterloo of 2023. They were out in no apologetic way. Pundits are now counting the impact of the revolutionary stampede so civilly launched to revive the defeat-stupefied spirits the “Indomitable Mighty CDC” and its partisans. We salute them.
BUT HERE ARE the vexing questions: Was “CDC Militants, Homecoming and Reconciliation Day” intentional and genuine to achieve reconciliation, transformation and repentance, words weaved into the theme of the occasion? When the cadres, militants and masses were, for three days, braving the killing colds, winds and rains, in most cases trekking miles and hours to and from headquarters and back, did the decision makers, the “executives”, the “veterans” and “mentors” feel a sense of guilt, compassion and remorse for the “masses of our people”. Did those, for six years, who gashed the National Cake, filled pockets and bank accounts, rode the best of cars, travelled so often broad, sojourning in plush abodes—those who in six years built mansions, who never felt hungry and thirsty, becoming merchants overnight—shed a stream of tears watching the masses danced in the torturing weather, singing halleluiah to them?
WE ASK BECAUSE such an electrifying occasion, first major assembly of the former ruling CDC party needed to be a forum where the leaders – the huge beneficiaries of the vote, sweat, blood and life of the ordinary partisans – would apologize openly for failing the people. Generally, the CDC was a let down for its caring, loyal and passionate partisans in many ways. Even in the heat of the 2023 elections, when the masses of the party voluntarily mobilized and wooed their undecided neighbors to vote their way, many leaders of the party closed doors on them, denying them party paraphernalia. Thousands of ordinary CDCians reportedly slept outside the gates of their leaders in search of t-shirts, lappers and other materials badly needed to share with undecided friends and relations. Those were crude days, as some leaders took the elections to be a jamboree for quick wealth, so they never saw ordinary majority of partisans as people upon whom to lavish support.
WHAT ABOUT DURING the six years’ period? First let’s trace the passion of ordinary CDCians before this time. Whether it was in 2005, or 2011, or 2017 at which time these ordinary partisans participated in campaigning for the party, they were mocked and labelled as wayward, wretched, illiterate, and cursed in so many ways. Despite those demeaning characterizations, ordinary citizens printed their own paraphernalia, chartered their own cars, some walked distances, to support their party. But when the party won in 2017, what did the ordinary members see? They saw an Animal Farm coming and settling down. They were thrashed, ignored, and abandoned. They became the jetsam and flotsams—the dump truck that built the mansion and afterwards ordered not to pass nearby.
MEANWHILE, THE EXECUTIVES, the veterans, the Kpakus, the Play-play-deos, found the six-year leadership which was secured at the cost of the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary partisans a bonanza for a few of them, their friends and family persons. The nation watched in amazement and wondered as these bigwigs were having lunch and dinner in the restaurants of Europe and America. Some were hosting weddings and birthday parties abroad. Meanwhile, many of the executives of the CDC if not all fled their original communities, divorced their comrades and allies from the trenches, never to reconnect with them anymore. Meanwhile, some changed their phone numbers, or simply saw the calls and messages from masses of the party as nauseating, disgusting and too low to pick up. Some of the kpakus programmed their WhatsApp inboxes to be seen from the other end as if they weren’t online or monitoring messages, a way of evading and downplaying the masses’ calls.
THUS, AS THE CDC celebrated its Militant and Reconciliation on the theme, “Transforming Setbacks into Great Comeback,” did they see those failures, those let-downs of the people as the setbacks needing transformation? Or did they only see setbacks of Unity Party’s “lies, propagandas, cheats” and not the woeful neglect of their own partisans? Did they not see the setback of individual arrogance, meanness, tricks and artifices, aristocratic tendencies, pride and neglect that the broader masses of the party, and by extension Liberians, suffered in their hands of the kpakues for six months?
EVEN RIGHT NOW, there are indications that some executives, kpakues, and play-play-deors are pulling out of and exiting group chatrooms because they cannot stand the expression of bold anguish and disappointment being vented by ordinary CDCians. Even right now, the cliques, the cabal, and associates widely blamed for the loss of the 2023 elections still appear to be intact, begging the questions amongst ordinary partisans if behavioral change has occurred. Ordinary CDCians are wondering if their party, which planning a comeback, is doing with their leaders’ old human attitudes and relationships with others being alive and kicking.
AS IF THE ordinary let-down masses have forgiven their leaders, they turned out unreservedly, they showed no inkling of ire and disappointment, they surrendered themselves to three days of weather-irked celebration, and they lavishly hooted praises and adoration on their leaders. This, we think, must be appreciated and recompensed by the leadership by the renewal of hearts, by the transformation of relationship with their partisans and ordinary Liberians who have long hailed and adored the CDC as a masses-based, pro-poor and people-center political party.
THAT IS THE best tribute anyone can pay, the best counsel anyone can provide the party at this point after the homecoming program, and the best result that “Militant Day” – the first major political gathering of the party since elections – can produce is total recovery, discovery and exercise of the “first love”—the “first love” which, after all, drove George Weah and the rest of them, into politics—love for partisans and impoverished majority of Liberians.
AS THE UNITY Party has begun to construct its own version of the Animal Farm Kingdom, chances are that the CDC could actually make an easy comeback, but that is not to be achieved unless it carries out genuine soul searching, transform and repent from its debauched patrician tendencies against its people.
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