Editorial: Let’s Refrain From Violence

The November 8 run-off presidential election in Liberia is a critical moment in the nation’s history, particularly so when one of the two candidates Cllr. Winston Tubman of the opposition Congress for democratic Change has called for a boycott.

“The election machinery is still flawed, as it was in the first round,” Tubman has claimed, and subsequently urged all CDCians to stay clear of the second round of polling.

This is rather unfortunate for a party that participated in the first round of elections on October 11, 20011 and won several seats both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Besides, among 16 parties that contested in October, the CDC came second to the governing Unity Party thus, qualifying both parties for the run-off.

All Liberians should be aware that voting in an election is an important civic duty that we must cherish in our democracy. Boycotting the process on the mere basis of perceived flaw is counterproductive to the kind of leadership we envisioned not only for ourselves, but the country.

The international community, including the United Nations and ECOWAS has tried intervening to ally all fears about cheating at the poll, but to no avail. Like in the first round of elections, international observers have come to monitor the election, but the CDC has insisted it would not participate.      

At the same time a US State Department statement issued here said, “The CDC’s charge that the first-round election was fraudulent is unsubstantiated.”The US State Department said on Saturday it was disappointed by the decision of Cllr. Tubman’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) to boycott the run-off.

Indeed, we too are disappointed in the CDC’s call for a boycott, which is an attempt to deny hundreds of thousands of CDCians across the country, who turned out in the rain and voted the party in both houses of the 53rd Legislature.

However, as CDCians, it is their right to stay away, but we oppose all forms of violence that could plunge the country in chaos again. Threat by CDC Secretary General Acarous Gray to creating a bitter Liberia, should the incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf receive a second term at the ballot box, is undemocratic. Gray’s comments are ingrained with violence.

Generally, Liberians have denounced violence as a means to settling political disagreements. For nearly two decades, this nation was subjected to bloody violence that took away the lives of hundreds of thousands of our beloved compatriots and destroyed basic infrastructure. At the end of it, we all became victims.

We aught to learn enough lessons from our past hostilities by now and shun violence in any form whether for the sake of a political party or candidate. There is more to gain as Liberians under a peaceful atmosphere than burning down towns, villages, schools, hospitals, Churches and Mosques again under guise of making political demands.