By Thomas Domah/Nimba County
Senate Prince Yormie Johnson of Nimba County, currently facing U.S. sanction for corruption and votes selling, seeks a third term in office, rallying his kinsmen here to re-elect him in 2023 because he redeemed them from Dictator Samuel Doe.
He has already served two nine-year terms in the Liberian Senate since 2005 and describes himself as the godfather of Nimba politics.
He repeated the statement during groundbreaking recently for a modern guest house in Gbor Whyeplay Town, electoral district#4 and Bahn City, District#7, respectively during inauguration of a cross border electrification project being undertaken by Jungle Energy Power (JEP) attended by the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Nathaniel McGill alongside other officials of government.
The leader of the Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction (MDR) party who turns 70 in July this year, pleads with Nimbaians not to vote him out because the Senate, he argues, is not for young people.
However, he supported a young candidate, now Senator Jeremiah Koung, against Madam Edith Gongloe-Wehyee during the December 8, 2021, Senatorial Election.
A former warlord and leader of the disbanded Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL) rebels during the Liberian Civil War, PYJ captured and slain President Samuel Kanyon Doe in 1990 inside the Freeport of Monrovia, mutilating the ears of the sitting President before his death.
The Doe regime had hunted the Nimba people and PYJ prides himself as a liberator of his kinsmen, a position that he uses during elections to get their votes.
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However, as Liberia celebrates its bicentennial, remembering the return of free slaves from America, President George Weah continues to call for unity, peace and reconciliation therefore, many see Sen. Johnson’s constant reference to the past as being non-reconciliatory. Editing by Jonathan Browne
