Weah death alarm is stupidity

Liberia’s Defense Minister Brownie Samukai has termed as a “stupidity” over claims by stewards of the opposition Coalition for Democratic Change or CDC that he and Vice President Joseph Nyumah Boakai has been plotting to assassinate its presidential candidate Sen. George Weah.

“So grant political power to the CDC, you will see what they will do. If you give these kinds of people political power, if you think the 1970s was bad, if you think the 1980s was bad, if you think Charles Taylor was bad, see what happens to these kinds of people when they make such kind of accusations,” Mr. Samukai said Monday, 28 August on live talk show at Prime FM.

Mr. Samukai’s reaction is in relations to allegations levied by CDC youth wing spokesman Alvin Wesseh on Wednesday, 23 August that under the instruction of ruling Unity Party or UP presidential candidate Joseph Boakai, the Defense Minister and Businessman George Bobby Kailondo had hired three hard core criminals in collaboration with some Russian assassins to assassinate Sen. Weah.

The CDC alleges that the assassins were told to shoot at Mr. Weah while addressing his supporters on the day the party launched its campaign rally two Saturdays ago. But Mr. Samukai’s frustration is that the CDC leadership has not disassociated itself from these claims.

Minister Samukai terms as “complete lie,” the CDC’s claims of assassination plot against Mr. Weah, citing a pattern of lies coming from CDC authorities in recent years.

The Defense Minister recalls that CDC vice chair for operations Mulbah Morlu’s claim of shaking hands with former U.S. President Barack Obama and Jefferson Koiji’s claims against him (Samukai) of plotting to overthrow the Sirleaf government, all “turned out to be a bloody lie.”

Judging from the way the main opposition party is proceeding, Mr. Samukai wonders if Liberia is going back to the days where university students who opposed government would be sitting and be arrested and accused of plotting against government.

“Is that the kind of leadership we expect from the CDC? Are we expecting that tomorrow when we give them political power, you as a journalist sitting in your studio here working will be accused of attempting to defame the government and get arrested? Is this the leadership that this country is looking for?” he ponders.

He expresses concern that the CDC is planting a seed of confusion, noting that the party leadership doesn’t understand the implications of what is being alleged against a sitting Vice President and a sitting Defense Minister.

Mr. Samukai tells his listening audience that he was in Washington, D.C., the week CDC alleges that he was having discussion with the hard core criminals for Weah’s assassination plan, adding that he doesn’t know the criminals.

He wonders how he could give $10,000 to some “ragamuffin” somewhere when he is looking for money now to hire people to harvest rice on his farm. The Defense Minister has instead encouraged the CDC to focus on an agenda and more important things that it needs than to bring disinformation to the Liberian people.

In trashing CDC’s suggestions that the UP government has failed, Mr. Samukai wonders how the CDC could even disassociate itself from the failures when its officials have been working in the very government, though they are not going back to the communities they came from including Slipway, West Point and New Kru Town to build a single latrine.

During the show, CDC representative Accarus Gray threatened to legally challenge Minister Samukai the day he goes on air to endorse a political candidate.

–By Winston W. Parley, editing by Othello B. Garblah