On Thursday, December 30, 2021 the All Liberian Party (ALP), headed by Benoni Urey, took the gigantic step of being the first party to walk out of the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP), crippling the political arrangement of the parties and dissolving what could have been the only force to reckon with in the 2023 general and presidential elections.
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of ALP on Thursday mandated its National Chairman and Political Leader to effect an immediate withdrawal of the party from the CPP—a decision that was made as a result of the uncertainties about the political future of the collaboration and the lack of strong will to implement the findings of the CPP investigation committee on the alteration of its Framework Agreement.
In a press release issued by the ALP on Thursday, the party said it plans to “reconvene to chart and carve a new roadmap for the ALP’s future engagement with other like-minded parties, in an effort to evolve a robust, unified, pragmatic, symbiosis and national interest-centered relationship to confront the 2023 general and presidential elections”.
The party also threatened to seek legal action for the “unlawful” attachment of its leaders’ signatures to a Framework Agreement of the CPP, filed with the National Elections Commission on July 14, 2020.
However, the ALP Executives’ threat can arguably be pointed to the Alternative National Congress (ANC) and its Standard Bearer, Alexander Benedict Cummings, who served as Chairperson of the CPP at the time. Cummings has been consistently accused of altering the CPP Framework Agreement, but has stood his ground that the document filed with the NEC was reviewed by CPP’s team of lawyers and signed by each and every leader of the constituent parties.
It is also expected that the Unity Party (UP) and the faction of the Liberty Party (LP) headed by Senator Nyonblee Karnga-Lawrence will officially declare their withdrawal anytime soon, finalizing the dissolution of the CPP.
What observers are speculating is that, even though these groups are leaving the CPP, they might re-gang in different form before the 2023 election, but without the ANC and the faction of the LP headed by Chairman Musa Hassan Bility, as it was clearly spelled out in the ALP withdrawal statement that “the party plans to reconvene to chart and carve a new roadmap for the ALP’s future engagement with other like-minded parties”.
Throughout the CPP hullabaloo, UP and ALP have always aligned, as well as the Karnga-Lawrence’s faction of the Liberty Party, and with all the three sides withdrawing from the collaboration in sequence, they might reunite, possibly with additional parties, to face President George M. Weah’s Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) in 2023.
Notwithstanding, the ANC and the Bility’s faction of the LP, too, stand a chance of recalibrating and strengthening their political marriage to chart a new course of direction. The only hitch on the way is which faction of the LP will pull the numbers and wheel legal recognition. The dissolution of the CPP, according to political pundits, is a blow in the face of the opposition at this crucial time of the political game, and if they fall short of grace the electorate could reprimand them at the ballot box for raising their expectation and dashing it to the ground without even consulting them.