Urey, PYJ gear up for 2017

Senate Prince Y. Johnson’s Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction or MDR party and businessman’s Benoni Urey’s All Liberian Party (ALP) are considering strong collaborative effort ahead of the 2017 elections.

Both parties were in Ganta, Nimba County over the weekend where the MDR held a family convention that saw the election of PYJ, a former presidential candidate and king maker in the 2011 elections as standard bearer.

The Senator is ex-standard bearer of the defunct National Union of Democratic Progress (NUDP) which he founded in 2010 to contest for the presidency in 2011. But he was booted out of that party after the leadership accused him of receiving money and selling out to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who he supported in the runoff.
The MDR leader had earlier collaborated with George Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) party during the 2011 polls, but backed off after he came third in the first round, which did not produce a clear winner, and subsequently pledged loyalty to Madam Sirleaf, whom he described as “lesser of two evils.”
On the other hand, the ALP leader Urey, a stern critic of the Sirleaf Administration, has vowed to work with Sen. Johnson in the 2017 elections.
Both parties were among more than a dozen other opposition parties, including the CDC, NPP, LPDP and ANC that converged in Ganta, Nimba about two months ago and signed a so-called “Ganta Declaration” that has dried of steam since. Three parties from the declaration – CDC, NPP and LPDP recently formed a separate coalition dubbed “Coalition for Democratic Change”.
Urey served in the regime of ex-president Charles Ghankay Taylor as Commissioner of the Liberia Maritime Authority, formerly Bureau of Maritime Affairs. He also worked with the current administration as Mayor of Carysburg City, but quit subsequently under unexplained circumstances.

By Franklin Doloquee in Nimba-Editing by Jonathan Browne