The race to unseat President George M. Weah and his Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) government in 2023 has begun, and the nation’s body politics continues to breed new political forces, with the President of the Liberia National Bar Association (LNBA), Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe, being the new politician to join the bandwagon.
After Cllr. Charles Brumksine’s complaint of electoral fraud was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2017 and the Weah-Taylor ticket announced victor of the election, the four political parties that ran to court for redress: Liberty Party (LP), Unity Party (UP), Alternative National Congress (ANC) and All Liberian Party (ALP), amalgamated forces and formed a collaboration that would be called the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP).
The CPP would become the major and apparently the only serious political opposition to the Weah-led government throughout the first, second and third year of the regime.
However, in early January 2021, the People’s Liberation Party (PLP)would be certificated by the National Elections Commission as a duly registered political party in Liberia, bringing on board the self-made millionaire, Dr. Daniel E. Cassell, as its Political Leader. Dr. Cassell and the PLP have since portrayed themselves as the voice of the less-fortunate Liberians and the disabled community, earning them a political dividend and a space to be seen as a major contender for the 2023 general and presidential elections.
Introducing humanitarian politics, Dr. Cassell would create more friends and less enemies as a political leader, playing his cards so well that he would influence leaders of other political parties to quit their positions, terminate their membership with the parties and join him in his quest of telling Liberians that “the time is now, and we are ready”.
Barely seven months after Dr. Cassell added to the “serious-minded” opposition that seeks to unseat President Weah in the 2023 elections, a new presidential candidate has surfaced in the nation’s body politics: Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe, who is building his block on the tenets of integrity and the rule of law.
Launching the “Team Gongloe” at the St. Kizito Church in Paynesville on Friday, July 30, 2021, the National Chairman of the group, Cllr. Jimmy Saah Bombo, said, “After intensive search among ourselves and across the landscape, we have found a Liberian who, for several years, beginning from his teen at the University of Liberia up to his present age, has demonstrated unflinching commitment to struggle for justice. This fellow, a countryman like us, is none other than Counselor Tiawan Saye Gongloe.”
According to Cllr. Bombo, Team Gongloe is a movement that consists of individuals and institutions from home and the diaspora, including the Movement to Ensure Liberia’s Transformation (MELT), Volunteers for Change (VOICE), Liberians for Integrity (LFI) and Information Hub Gongloe (IHG).
He stated that Team Gongloe is a community of Liberians from diverse political, social and economic orientation, bonded with the shared belief that a better Liberia is possible under the leadership of Cllr. Gongloe.
Giving a synopsis of what a Gongloe Presidency would be like, Cllr. Bombo noted that, if they win the 2023 election there will be an uncompromising adherence to the rule of law, judiciary independence and the administration of blind justice without fear or favor, and that Liberia will become a country of equal justice before the law, where the National Legislature makes laws that benefit the totality of the population instead of the lawmakers and a select few.
He continued that a Gongloe Presidency will also mean a Liberia in which corruption is a capital crime, public officials are public servants and not rulers of the people, the citizens are prime movers and shakers of the nation’s economy and not bystanders while foreigners call the shots, adding that citizens will eat what they grow and grow what they eat, with the doctrine of separation of power, check and balance being strictly adhered to by the three branches of government.
Since the launch of Team Gongloe on Friday, there has been mixed reactions as it regards the learned councilor throwing his cap into the presidential race.
Even though Team Gongloe did not announce whether Cllr. Gongloe will be contesting the primaries of any of the existing political parties for the standard bearer-ship or they are about to form another opposition political party to be headed by him, it is a glaring fact that there will be varied options to select from come 2023.
With the sample views collected by the Hot Pepper, some electorates see Alexander Cummings of the ANC as the economic candidate; Joseph Boakai the experience and international contact candidate, Dr. Daniel Cassell the poverty-solution candidate, and now Cllr. Gongloe the integrity candidate. The incumbent and Political Leader of the CDC, George M. Weah, has earned for himself names like bad road medicine, darkness medicine, etc.
However, now that Cllr. Gongloe is being tipped as a political candidate, observers are wondering whether he would still carry out his function as President of the Liberia National Bar Association (LNBA) without bias or compromise.