Success of Liberian elections depends on all
By Ben Mensah
THE GROWING interest in the way Liberia is being led to 'constitutional civilian rule' by 1986 cannot be described as misplaced. For in a region where military and one party dictatorships hold sway and dissenters are constantly chased into exile or intimidated into acquiescence, any hint about the emergence of a regime which pledges to accommodate contrary views and allow the people the freedom to elect their government is bound to arouse intense attention from far and near.
When Master-Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe seized power in a coup on April 12, 1980, the revulsion exhibited by the international community was based less on his overthrow of a one party regime dominated by one section of the Liberian society than the very bloody nature of the coup in which President Tolbert and a number of his ministers were executed and given a mass burial.
And for the fact that President Tolbert was then the president of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Gen. Doe was prevented from taking part in a summit of ECOWAS leaders in Lagos, Nigeria, days after coming to power. The drama of his expulsion was that as news reached the Lagos conference hall of Gen. Doe's departure from Monrovia to attend the summit there was initial trepidation and later hesitation over what to do. Then a decision was finally taken by deposed President Shagari to order back from Nigerian airspace the plane that was carrying Gen. Doe. He recently had occasion to retaliate by being the first West African leader to congratulate Gen. Buhari when he overthrew Alhaji Shagari in a coup on December 31, 1983.
The rebuff to Gen. Doe was carried further to a summit of the OAU three months later in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he was again prevented from attending to act as President who was scheduled to hand over to a new President.
Ostracised and embarrassed by these developments Gen. Doe in the same year of his coup started talking about returning Liberia to constitutional civilian rule by 1985.
Coincidentally too, Gen. Doe arrived on the political scene at a time the one party syndrome and military bug hadn't completely infested the West African region.
Together with the Gambia and Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria persisted in their experiment with a constitutional multi-party system. Bourkina Fasso (Upper Volta) was then ruled by military leaders who were committed to returning their country to civilian rule while in Cameroon two years later, President Ahidjo's autocratic rule was being replaced with a relatively liberal administration of Paul Biya.
For good or bad General Doe will be remembered as the radical leader who broke ranks with other African leaders to re-establish diplomatic relations with Israel. He will also be remembered as the native soldier who ended the monopolisation of Liberian politics by the descendants of the freed slaves who emigrated from America.
Gen. Doe himself gave a further hint of the pressures direct and indirect on him to return his country to civilian rule when last April he decided to return 350,000 dollars contributed by the USA towards the restoration of civilian rule for what was described as US interference in Liberia's internal affairs.
According to Monrovia radio the Liberian Ambassador in Washington had been questioned the previous week about the government's decision to extend the constitutional time table until 1986.
Having fenced off pressure from the Americans and faced with a new West African scene where Nigeria, once regarded as the country with the best chance of succeeding with the parliamentary multi-party system, is now ruled by soldiers, Gen. Doe is being tempted to stay on in power..
And why not? Gen. Doe is a fully fledged Liberian who like any other is entitled to exercise his fundamental right of seeking political office in his motherland/fatherland and his decis- ion to form a political party, National Democratic Party is consistent with this inalienable right.
General Doe however, is in an unenviable position of having to lead a political party to contest the forth- coming elections when he is the country's incumbent Head of State. For in this position he has exposed his government to criticisms from the rival parties.
And when that happens Doe's government which is charged with the organisation and supervision of the elections may be tempted to discard fairness in the conduct of the elections. For good or bad Gen. Doe will be remembered as the radical leader who broke ranks with other African leaders to re-establish diplomatic relations with Israel. He will also be remembered as the native soldier who ended the monopolisation of Liberian politics by the descendants of the freed slaves who emigrated from America. Perhaps he also aspires to be remembered as the military ruler who chose a novel method of ushering his country into constitutional civilian rule.
If that is so then in spite of the changed circumstances in which Gen. Doe made his pledge to return his country to civilian rule, he must stick to the time table to return the country to civilian multi-party system in 1986. So far there is no evidence to show that he does not want to cling to the idea of a multi-party parliamentary system. That alone is still a healthy develop- ment in West Africa for which Gen. Doe must be encouraged.
His decision to form a political party to contest the elections must be seen as coming from a man who has seen Cameroon's President Ahidjo hand power over to Paul Biya to be sentenced later to death, Ghana's Rawlings stage a second coup to snatch power from President Limann whom he handed over power, Nigeria's Gen. Obasanjo accused by the opposition of handing over power to the party of his choice and Togo's General Eyadema simply turn his country into a one- party state with himself as leader of the party and President of the country.
Gen. Doe's approach is a novel experiment which if pursued with sincerity is likely to introduce a liberal and tolerant system to Liberia and give hope to all freedom and peace loving West Africans that not all of the region is condemned to be ruled by one party dictatorships or chaotic and violent military regimes.
But the successful implementation of the task does not depend on Gen. Doe alone. All those who have formed political parties must persist in their fight in the hope of winning the elections. The fight against an incumbent leader surely will be tough. But it is the ability of the politicians on the other side of the carpet to persevere to the end of the electioneering campaign that will establish their credibility as well - tested leaders who are capable of leading Liberians into freedom and prosperity.
