By: Rancy S. Teewia
As the governing Coalition for Democratic Change runs its third lap, there seems to be veritable cracks within the structure that cemented a triumvirate political marriage between George Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change, Jewel Howard-Taylor’s National Patriotic Party and Alex Tyler’s Liberian People Democratic Party. Apart from President Weah and his Vice President openly opposing one another, exemplified by the two supporting different legislative candidates in Bong County for the 2020 midterm senatorial elections, the leadership of the Youth Wing of the Liberian People Democratic Party (LPDP) has bashed at the government of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC); accusing the CDC of marginalizing the LPDP in the arrangement, to the extent of supporting the candidature of a non-partisan member over the Liberian People Democratic Party’s political leader Alex J. Tyler in the Bomi County midterm senatorial race.
Appearing on a local radio talk show Thursday, two representatives of the Youth League, Mr. Napoleon Dukuly and Flomo A. Flomo, accused President Weah of supporting Edwin Melvin Snowe in the midterm Senatorial election in Bomi County at a time that LPDP Political Leader Alex J. Tyler is in the race contesting the Bomi County hot seat.
Representative Snowe, the two LPDP stalwarts said, is not a member of the CDC coalition but is always seen in Bomi County distributing rice to the people of the County in the name of President Weah. This, they said, is an indication of neglect of the LPDP’s membership in the CDC tripartite arrangement, indicating that the votes of the LPDP members seem not to matter to the ruling CDC.
The two Youth leaders said that the LPDP is gravely marginalized, adding that given the way they are treated, “… members are leaving the party because the party does not protect them.”
The youth leaders said, since the CDC took state power as the result of the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, only four partisans, including the Party Chairman Moses Kollie, have been appointed in the government by President Weah.
They said the LPDP is marginalized to the extent that none of the leaders of the Youth Wing of the LPDP from the 17 electoral districts of Montserrado County is employed in the tripartite arrangement.
The youths said they cannot struggle for a victory that they benefit nothing from, which makes it look like the case of the dump truck that built the Executive Mansion but is forbidden to pass in front of it.
Consequently, the two LPDP Youth League spokespersons maintained that the treatment accorded the Party by the CDC leadership provides reasons why they should renege on their loyalty to the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change in the ensuing elections.
“We are marginalized by this President. Can you imagine only four of our partisans are employed in the government? No one from the Youth League has been given a job in this government while almost all of the Youth Wing members from the Congress for Democratic Change are in top government positions,” the LPDP Youth League stalwarts said.
Dukuly and Flomo recalled that the youths of the LPDP voted the CDC during the 2017 presidential and general elections, which brought President Weah to state power.
They indicated that Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), the National Patriotic Party (NPP) headed by the Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, and the LPDP of former House Speaker Alex J. Tyler came together and formed an alliance named and styled the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) in order to unseat the Unity Party Government then headed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
The two LPDP Youth League members said LPDL partisans, especially the youth, from 14 out of 15 political sub-divisions in Liberia overwhelmingly voted the Coalition for Democratic Change and defeated the Unity Party government’s former Vice President Joseph N. Boakai featured by the then ruling party as its standard Bearer in its quest to retain power.
But they said all the coordinators from the 17 Districts in Montserrado County, who worked harder to ensure the victory of the CDC, were ignored and marginalized after the elections.
They said an official position of protest would be published soon by the leadership of the LPDP Youth League.
In the wake of the allegations of marginalization of the LPDP by the CDC and the alleged support to the Edwin Snowe bid for the Bomi Senatorial seat, The Analyst made frantic efforts to contact the LPDP political leader Alex Tyler fruitlessly. The CDC hierarchy was also sought by The Analyst for comments on the alleged marginalization of the LPDP but was unsuccessful.
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