REPORTEDLY AND REGRETTABLY too, a daughter of the late President Samuel Kanyon Doe, Ms. Celue Doe, last week held an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in which she tried to forewarn the Standard Bearer of the ruling Unity Party (UP), Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, against teaming up with the third runner-up in the just-ended preliminary round of the Presidential election, the National Union for Democratic Progress (NUDP) of Nimba County Senior Senator Prince Y. Johnson, who serves as Standard Bearer.
DRAMATIC IT APPEARED to some segments of the Liberian society, against the backdrop of her interest shown towards the ongoing political activities in Liberia, many however consider her view as been far from a reconciliatory approach once pursued by her father in the 1980s, following the assassination of Liberia’s 19th President, the Rev. Dr. William Richard Tolbert, Jr.
THE MOVE BY the late President Doe, at the time, was necessitated by the flight of capital and human resources, all of which were credited to the Tolbert administration, thus engendering the extension of an olive branch to the many that had fled the country to return home and join his government in rebuilding the society.
WHAT SUMMARILY UNFOLDED was the gradual absorption of elements that had served within the government overthrown by the late President Doe, allowing them to have assisted in the formation and smooth running of the National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL), howbeit the swift and questionable manner in which the party came into being.
CONSTRUED THEN TO have been an act of reconciliation and forgiveness not only for former officials of the Tolbert administration but vice versa, especially with very resourceful elements of the past regime placed in the party’s hierarchy to effectively steer its affairs, the pace at which national cohesion obtained are only a matter of records.
TO HAVE THEREFORE had Ms. Celue Doe, speaking far from home perhaps out of information obtained from the internet that may not always prove right by virtue of their shallowness, is indeed a posteriori and not a priori as should be, thus giving an impression that the democratization process since embarked upon in Liberia, with electioneering becoming an essential ingredient, should be held in a vacuum.
WHILST WE ARE not prepared to share the many negative public views over Ms. Doe’s seeming admonition to the UP Standard Bearer, in view of our commitment to helping propagate democratic ideals in sustaining the hard-earned peace and stability restored to Liberia, it is however worth underscoring that the ongoing political engagements and not necessarily marriages are part of the healthy political interactions required in priding the nation with having conducted free, fair and transparent elections, as opposed to been fraudulent.
LIBERIANS BEEN WHAT they are and no matter the right to opinion, no amount of hatred or divisiveness can rebuild the nation, unless unified in the true spirit of forgetting the past, building upon past mistakes in a harmonious way and forging ahead with socio-economic growth and development overriding retributive tending to once again invite retribution that has respectively affected the Tolbert and Doe families over the decades.
