“UP/Boakai Used Us; It Won’t Happen Again!” -ALP’s Urey Gives Reasons for Going Solo

MONROVIA: Telecommunications magnate Benoni Urey and his All Liberian Party (ALP) threw their weight behind former Vice President Joseph Nyuma Boakai in 2017 when Mr. Boakai contested the Liberian presidency and lost to soccer icon George Manneh Weah. Since then, Mr. Urey continued to reinforce his loyalty to Ambassador Boakai, at the peril of his own political ambition and that of the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP) of which Urey’s ALP was a constituent member. But today, the man who always considered Ambassador Boakai as his political godfather says his cup is overflowed and he won’t be supporting Mr. Boakai any longer because Boakai and his Unity Party are focused on destroying the ALP.

“We no longer support Unity Party. The reason is because of how they treated us. Almost four of our candidates, they took them away from us. And the fact that they’re from the same tribe and the same county, they took them away from us. They used tribal pressure to force these people to leave from our party. People we worked with for six years were bad enough to go and try to destroy us a party. But we will let them know during this election that we are a force to reckon with.

“We spent our time, our energy, our resources on you for six years; and one or two legislative seats you fight us, you take it away; you take away our candidates that we have nurtured and made strong over the years. I want the world to know that we’re not stupid, and will never be used that way again.

“You know, there is a common saying, on Christmas eve, you will know how the Christmas will be. God is a wonderful God. He showed us these people now. If we had gone through these elections and would have won, they would have treated us like dogs.

“Then there’re all over Facebook propagating all kinds of lies. The last one was that we were at Boulevard Hotel meeting with government officials. Man like me, Benoni Urey in Liberia, will sit to Boulevard Hotel and people will bring little money to him? When I can go to George Weah any hour and tell them to go tell him I am there, and he will come. If I call him and tell him, Mr. President, come see me, I want to come, he will come. That’s my younger brother. Do I have to go to Boulevard Hotel? If you decide to go back to Unity Party, your can go. But anywhere else the party decides we’re going, we’re going there with force,” Mr. Urey vented.

Urey confirms Costa’s allegations

The ALP political leader’s statement comes in the wake of revelations made by talk show host and political activist Henry Pedro Costa on July 11, 2023 when among other things, Costa listed a litany of reasons why the ALP would no longer be supporting the Unity Party and its standard bearer in the October 10, 2023 polls.

“ALP’s relationship with and support for Ambassador Boakai and the UP began during the 2017 elections. After the first round of the general and presidential elections of 2017, the All Liberian Party, led by our dynamic leader, Hon. Benoni Urey, made a clear and what we believed to be a patriotic decision to rally our forces and stand firmly with the Unity Party and its Standard Bearer, Amb. Joseph N. Boakai, as they faced off against CDC’s then-Senator George Weah in a fiercely contested runoff election.

“A few years ago, our Political Leader, Hon. Benoni Urey, set off some nerves in the camp of our former CPP partner, the ANC, when he publicly announced that he would not be vying for the presidency himself, and stated that Amb. Joseph Boakai should be crowned the Standard Bearer of the CPP because of his experience and seniority, amongst other reasons. That single pronouncement, which I must admit, wasn’t exactly a derived position of our party, caused a deep rift between us and the Alex Cummings camp.

“However, we believed that there was a need for decisiveness to ensure a clear path for opposition victory. He made a clear decision to support Ambassador Boakai without any posturing or requests for anything for himself or the ALP- a decision which would eventually lead to the ALP being treated with great disregard, as other parties and individuals demanded that they would only support UP if they were told what they would get out of it.

“The ALP was continuously mocked for “selling itself for nothing” while other parties held their support as bargaining chips. This did not deter us and we remained unflinching in our support for Amb. Boakai and the UP,” Costa said.

“Over the years, we fought many other battles publicly and privately for Amb. Joseph Boakai. And as for financial support, Hon. Urey, Telia Urey, and I, personally provided sustained and immense financial support to Amb. Boakai that we do not wish to disclose here today, but there are tons of witnesses to this fact!

“Amb. Boakai and the Unity Party have quickly forgotten the tremendous amount of sacrifice that ALP and its leaders, including myself, have made over the past decade standing against the ills in our society. Therefore, we will never compromise our values to support any and everything just because we want power or to win an election. We shall continue to stand up for what we believe is right and only support a ticket we believe that has individuals with the same ideology as we do, to change the direction of our country for the betterment of all Liberians. We have not stood firmly all these years, only to dance with the “devil” today for the sake of power. We strongly reject that and feel very sorry that the old man would put himself through this out of desperation.

“Since the announcement, and during this period of our silence and consultation, the Unity Party has been antagonizing the ALP in ways that we would have never imagined after all of our sacrifices made and the support that we gave them. Firstly, UP executives have been engaging some ALP aspirants to abandon ALP and run on the UP ticket across many districts. They have engaged ALP executives to resign from ALP and join UP. All of which evil efforts have failed.

“We have sent several words of caution asking them to desist, but have all fallen on deaf ears. They have also moved to field candidates in many areas against ALP candidates, something which we both previously agreed they would not do. Moreover, you all recently witnessed how Ms. Telia Urey was unceremoniously removed from the JNB Tact Team, an organization that she led with distinction and passion, sacrificing her time, energy, and resources to make it what it is today.

We did not abandon Amb. Joseph Boakai as they would have you believe, but rather it was Amb. Joseph Boakai who abandoned us. Even worse, he has also abandoned his own vision for the Liberian people,” Costa averred.