The oil continues to spill here, soaking deep and leaving a dingy stain on relationship between President George Manneh Weah and Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor, even as the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change faces serious internal fight from Jewel’s National Patriotic Party.
Multiple media reports persistently indicate that camaraderie between the two is far from being cozy, and Madam Taylor herself has more than once publicly issued apology, reassurance and expressed solidarity for President Weah.
But fresh claims by Liberia’s Finance and Development Planning Minister, Samuel Tweah reveals Vice President Taylor is sick.Minister Tweah made the disclosure at an intellectual discourse on Bushrod Island, Monrovia over the weekend in response to a question posed to him.
The Minister had gone at the intellectual center to interact with members of the group and the public on the workings of the Coalition government, the economy and fiscal policy of the state.Minister Tweah’s interaction was thwarted by a question from the audience, seeking to understand relationship between the Vice President Taylor and President Weah.
He describes the relationship as close and cordial, but disclosed that last week, President George Weah had gone to visit VP Jewel Taylor when officers of the Executive Protection Service, the elite presidential guard informed the President that the Vice President is ill and doctors advise she takes bed rest.
Based on the information, the NewDawn visited Vice President Taylor’s office at the Capitol on Monday 17 December to authenticate the information.
The spokesman in the Vice President’s office, Solomon Ware, declined to comment on grounds that the information came from a “key and influential” Minister of the government, who may know a lot about the health status of the Vice President as compared to him.
Relationship between President Weah and Madam Taylor appears gloomy in public since their ascendency to the nation’s highest offices. Jewel in March this year revealed on live television that her relationship with President Weah has not been good, but added that issues have been ironed out.
In November, the embattled Chairman of Madam Taylor’s National Patriotic Party James Biney, alleged that Jewel has ambition to contest for the Presidency against President Weah in 2023.
“This is the real issue; Mrs. Taylor invited me and told me she wants to contest the Presidency [in] 2023, and that she needs people to join me to remove the Party from the Coalition and I said, ‘Mrs. Taylor, that will be the saddest mistake you will make because we have a lot of work to do so, if that is what you are thinking about, wait for 12 years’ and she said the Party is her husband’s party and if I cannot conform to her proposal, I should leave the party”, Biney narrates to this paper.
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A member of the governing Coalition for Democratic Change, the NPP is split right in the middle with embattled Chairman Biney leading one faction, whiles the other faction that is loyal to Jewel, is being headed by ex-vice president John Gray, a stalwart of the NPP.Both factions are currently before the National Elections Commission in a leadership battle.
By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor–Editing by Jonathan Browne
