-As Sen. Wesseh stresses need to include others
River Gee County Senator Conmany B. Wesseh says if the opposition Collaborating Political Parties (CPP) must win the presidency, it must go beyond the limits of its four political parties and bring others on board because “there is serious leadership in holding together.”
“It means that if CPP must win, CPP must hold together not only with the four parties that are [now] collaborating; they must … have the openness to bring on board some others,” Senator Wesseh said during a live talk show Wednesday, 28 April on OK FM.
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“I think the CDC [Coalition for Democratic Change] from the Congress … to the Coalition showed that, that the Congress by itself alone could not have won the elections so they went into … coalition with other parties, the NPP [National Patriotic Party], the whatever else, and they came together and they were able to win,” he Senator Wesseh adds.
The ruling CDC is made up of President George MannehWeah’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), Vice President Jewel Howard – Taylor’s NPP and former House Speaker J. Alex Tyler’s Liberian People Democratic Party (LPDP); while the opposition CPP is made up of the Unity Party (UP), Alternative National Congress (ANC), Liberty Party (LP) and the All Liberian Party (ALP).
Senator Wesseh also recalls that the former ruling Unity Party also collaborated with other parties including the Liberia Action Party (LAP) and the Liberia Unification Party (LUP), formed the new Unity Party and they won the presidency which ushered in Africa’s first female elected president, Mrs. Ellen Johnson – Sirleaf.
Giving a reflection of how President George Manneh Weah managed to get the presidency and succeeded former President Sirleaf, Senator Wesseh explains that Mr. Weah at some point in time had to leave his presidential ambition to run as vice president and even won a senate seat in a subsequent election.
Owing to the fact that President Weah is a retired Liberian international soccer star, Senator Wesseh suggests that Mr. Weah probably thought that [team work] is the only way you win in a football game, and therefore he brought people together again having lost the elections.
“All I’m saying [is] that George [Weah] learned that, he learned that in leadership, that you can’t do it alone and … if they will get their whipping, it will be as soon as he begins to think that only he alone can do it,” he says.
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Senator Wesseh, a Unity Party stalwart, states further that if the other side can put together and make Liberians believe that they can provide the leadership as a united body and bury their egos, they can win.
Commenting on the internal crisis within the CPP, Senator Wesseh notes that when you have people around who all believe they want to be president, they will have to say it and continue to say it.He however believes that the CPP will realize and [do what it ought to do] with the pressure coming from the population here.
He explains that many people didn’t believe that the CPP could put up candidates for the 2020 senatorial elections given the “undemocratic” way people were selected by allowing each party within the CPP to take four counties and pick their candidates there.
However he argues that this was what the parties agreed upon and through that, the ruling CDC did not win [majority of] the senatorial seats in that election.
By Winston W. Parley
