More resignations

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s governing Unity Party continues to suffer mass resignations barely two years to the end of her tenure and the next presidential election here with the once formidable UP rapidly disintegrating.

Scores of UP partisans among them some executive members, including House Speaker Alex Tyler, resigned recently from the party. The latest exit involves the entire Bomi County leadership of the UP, including county chairman Richard B. Devine and county chairlady Maima B. Free, among others.

Bomi is the home county of President Sirleaf, but in a letter addressed to the UP estranged National Chairman, Senator Varney G. Sherman dated Tuesday, October 26, 2015, the officials accused their standard bearer, the President, of neglecting the county.

The resignation letter signed by 18 officials of the UP Bomi County branch partly reads, “Over the past 10 years of leadership, we have found ourselves just defending the failed policies of our government to the citizens and opposition with promises that Bomi will rise again under our party leadership.

The slogan ‘you do me, I do you’ remains the epitome of our deception to Bomi. Ten years have gone and we and the opposition have seen nothing, but economic regression, rise in poverty and a silent government as to our plight. Campaign promises are unfulfilled to the extent that we have become the mockery of other Counties that are progressing.” 
Since President Sirleaf’s second term, the ruling party has been engulfed in series of internal crisis with party youths at one point, threatening to cast ‘vote of no confidence’ in the standard bearer due to lack of job opportunities and consultations with party executives on crucial issues.

The ever outspoken secretary general of the Unity Party, Wilmot Paye, has kept a conspicuous silence and remained out of public limelight likewise the National Chairman Cllr. Varney G. Sherman.
Chairman Sherman has maintained a distance with the standard bearer since his Independence Day Oration in Robertsport, Grand Capemount County where he spoke against corruption and other excesses in the government, but was subsequently rebuked by the Minister of Information, Lewis Brown.

The strange in relations between the First Partisan and the party chairman became very visible during the special senatorial election of 2014 when President Sirleaf openly supported a candidate against her own party chairman, Cllr. Sherman for the senatorial seat of Grand Cape Mount County much to the disappointment of not only UP partisans, but ordinary Liberians.      

In their letter of resignation signed by each of the 17 officials of the Bomi County Branch, they said when they joined the Unity Party and campaigned for leadership of Liberia, they did so believing that the UP was the most qualified party to bring development to Bomi, but 10 years after, they now join the opposition in believing that this conviction is false as Bomi remains as backward as it was 10 years ago.

“As a result of the foregoing and several other reasons that we refrain to cite here, we have chosen this moment to discontinue our membership with the unity Party. Please let this communication serves as our official resignation from the Unity Party”, the letter concluded.