EDITORIAL: CDC’s Dream World: A Bad Omen for Holding Peaceful Elections

Well ahead of the general and presidential elections the country’s main opposition party the Congress for Democratic Change or CDC has claimed that it has all of the eligible voters on its side plus an additional 20 million electorate to sweep the poll. In fact, the CDC furthered that it has already won the elections and was only waiting to be inaugurated!

But no sooner had the party made the wide claim when the National Elections Commission promptly came up with a clarification that contrary to the claim, the NEC had officially registered in total 1.8 million eligible Liberians for the ensuing elections. The commission then warned the party to desist from making unfounded claims that have the propensity to misinform and confuse the public.

The CDC’s claim reportedly made by its standard bearer Cllr. Winston Tubman is said and very unfortunate to the say the least, particularly coming from a party whose members have a track record for thriving on threats and insecurity.

We are fully reminded of how former standard bearer George Weah in 2005 campaigned on the CDC’s emblem and told overzealous youthful partisans to elect all candidates on the ballot papers with the party’s symbol, a strategy that saw the CDC winning majority seats in both houses of the National Legislature for Montserrado County.

In fact, after the party took a simple lead in the first round of the poll in 2005, George Weah told his partisans that they have already won so the November 8, 2005 run-off poll was a mere formality. But when the results of the second round were announced by NEC, they jumped in the streets in protest.

We can safely say without blinking that what is currently unfolding in the CDC is a repeat of the 2005 scenario when it got disillusioned by an erratic crowd and sailed through the elections in complete fantasy rather than putting forth a convincing platform to the electorate. While other parties were detailing their respective development agenda for the country, the CDC took bystanders, less busied and inquisitive crowd at its campaign rallies to mean qualified voters who could deliver the presidency at its doorstep.

Again, the party has begun to campaign for the ensuing elections on the same path, dreaming that it already has 2 million voters to elect it to power in October when in reality, the total qualified voters for the 2011 elections is 1.8 million. We wonder where the extra two million voters are coming from to take the CDC to power. Could this be a strategy to cause confusion again after the elections?

We hail the National Elections Commission for the timely clarification, which will disabuse the minds of the public that the list of qualified voters exceeds 1.8m as the CDC would want not only its partisans but the entire country to erroneously believe. This is troubling style of politicking.  

Rather than thriving on such dangerous path in these elections, we call on the CDC to begin telling the electorate what it intends to do to transform Africa’s oldest republic into a society where illiteracy, poverty, disease and all other forms of backwardness would become problems of the past. Since official campaign for the ensuing elections began almost a month ago, the party is yet to say clearly how it intends to deliver basic social services to the people.