Montserrado County witnessed a mass human turnout on Saturday, November 21, 2020, completely locking down the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex and leaving the streets of Monrovia with a handful of persons, with observers of the trend of politics expressing shock with the way CDCians turned out massively to commemorate the party’s official campaign launch, styled, “Blue Tsunami”.
Historically, senatorial elections for Montserrado County’s seats have always been won by members of opposition parties. In 1985, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, then a member of the Liberia Action Party (LAP), won the senatorial seat of Montserrado County. However, she argued that the elections were rigged in favor of President Samuel Kanyon Doe, thereby refusing to take her place at the Liberian Senate.
The election of President Charles G. Taylor in 1997 saw Montserrado County being represented by Grace B. Minor at the Liberian Senate. She later became the first female to serve as President Pro Tempore after the death of Keikura B. Kpoto in 2002. Howbeit, Minor was appointed Senator, and was not elected.
In 2006, the both seats were won by the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC): Joyce Musu Freeman and Hannah G. Brent. A few years later, Senator Brent passed off, and was again replaced by another CDCian, Geraldine Doe-Sheriff, who completed her tenure and re-won the seat during the 2011 election. In the 2014 senatorial election, Ambassador George M. Weah of the CDC clinched on the seat, replacing Senator Freeman.
After Weah was elected President in the 2017 general election, his seat at the Senate was pronounced vacant, and was replaced by then Representative Saah H. Joseph of Montserrado County’s district #13. This was the first post-war senatorial election in Montserrado County to be won by a ruling party.
In 2018, when Senator Doe-Sheriff passed off, the ruling CDC did everything to reclaim the seat, but however lost to the opposition Liberty Party (LP) candidate, Abraham Darius Dillon.
On the overall, the history of senatorial elections does not augur well for ruling parties in Montserrado County. Whether history will continue to be made by the opposition in Montserrado or whether the ruling party will turn the tide around for the second time is a question that can only be answered at the poll, an elderly man observed to the Hot Pepper.
However, with the mammoth crowd pulled by the CDC candidate, Representative Thomas P. Fallah, alias T-5, on Saturday, observers are saying that the district #5 lawmaker could be tipped as the most favorite for the December polls, because election is numbers.
They say it was least expected that the ruling establishment could even fill the Antoinette Tubman Stadium (ATS) at this time, lest to talk about SKD, with the wave of alleged killings, rampant corruption, economic stagnation, currency fluctuation, international threats, and so on. According to them, this election might just be the next senatorial election to be won by a sitting government in Montserrado County if the opposition does not put its house in order. However, there are others who argued that, even though the CDC vividly showed strength on Saturday, the number that turned out can in no way rival the number of votes that Senator Dillon obtained in 2019. According to them, the SKD can take up to 35,000 persons, and holding everything constant that the CDC completely filled the stadium, the number is less than half of the number that voted for Senator Dillon, as he was won the election with more than 100,000 votes.