Countdown to the Military Coup of 1980 (Part V)

The resulting ‘Sawyer for Mayor’ campaign was the first time in over a quarter of a century that an opposition candidate had stepped up to challenge the True Whig Party’s monopoly on power. That attempt to return the ballot box to Liberian politics (a practice few remembered) was portentous (pointing the way ahead). Indeed, it would turn out no less than the final, desperate effort at reform by peaceful means.

When the campaign snowballed into a movement that threatened to expose the ruling True Whig Party as little more than a few powerful party bosses and a building bearing a name that for years had struck fear in the hearts of Liberians, True Whig Party stalwarts became concerned. With the Tolbert administration caught off guard, the party’s standard-bearer made a quick move to head off the trouble heading his way. A conciliatory hand was extended to the opposition, asking them to attend a meeting in hopes of keeping the situation from getting out of hand. Mayoral candidate, Amos Sawyer, showed up for the meeting, accompanied by Dr. Togbah-Nah Tipoteh and Professor Dew Tuan Wleh Mayson.

A party that “by hook or by crook” had kept Liberians from going to the polls for the past 27 years, did not want to be pushed into throwing together an election that had not been in their plans. The times sure were “a-changing,” to quote the songwriter, Bob Dylan. An old hand at the ensuing gamesmanship, President Tolbert kept his cool and presented the matter to the leaders of the opposition as calmly as he could: he wanted the election postponed, all in the interest national security, and whatever else he could throw in that was necessary to win his young challengers over.

The truth was that the ruling party had nothing in place for an election of any kind.

Even worse, losing control of Monrovia would – to use a popular True Whig Party expression – “leave them naked!” In the hands of the opposition, Monrovia, the only functioning political apparatus despite its limitations, would deny that clique a platform to rest on, passing itself off as a national structure. Also exposed would be the predatory practices and intermingling proclivities of the ruling party and the government it ran by co-opting the functions and finances of the nation’s largest city ….

PRESIDENT/MAYOR

The practice of trying to run a city while posing as a national government dates back to Joseph Jenkins Roberts. When Roberts took the oath of office as president of Liberia in 1847, he was sworn in as governor of Monrovia as well. (Roberts had already served as governor of the Commonwealth of Monrovia.) Over the next century-and-a-half, one president or the other simply declined to make local government a priority or a reality: a tradition that, in many more ways than one, had become a part of our national psyche.

The opportunity at hand for the state government to truly go national, setting itself up to (maybe) stimulate local income-generation by providing capital to foster the development of small businesses that would create jobs and help boost the economy was exhilarating! But that was not to be.

ELATION

Elated by that unexpected concession from the Tolbert administration on their first foray into elective politics, the three representatives freaked out, and falling over each other, began volunteering concessions of their own. Sawyer deferred to the more doctrinaire Tipoteh, long regarded as first amongst equals within the Moja/Susukuu hierarchy that would provide the mass support that postured menacingly at the TWP hegemony. Once in the limelight, Tipoteh grabbed at what had eluded him for years: an opportunity to re-invent himself to a largely suspicious political and educated class as pragmatic. Accordingly, Dr. Tipoteh led the way in agreeing to Tolbert’s postponement plan as reasonable; and maybe it was!

DASHED

Of course, neither Tipoteh, nor any other of the three had been authorized to agree to anything Tolbert proposed. By not returning to base to relay Tolbert’s request, they sided with Tolbert and clique – dashing the democratic aspirations of their colleagues, the campaign’s supporters as well as the chance to alter their country’s course!

Their ‘on-the-spot’ agreement to postpone left two impressions: (1) that they had been authorized to agree or disagree with Tolbert’s proposal; and (2) that the organization they represented did not matter, placing them at liberty to do whatever they wanted. Neither was true!

The ‘Sawyer for Mayor’ campaign obviously looked to various organizations including public schools and colleges, the churches, opposition movements and their leaders, for mass support. But no single organization can claim itself author of the spontaneous idea that sprang forth that year in 1979 simply by virtue of its association, though a few have tried.

The decision of those three representatives – Tipoteh, Sawyer and Mayson – to act independently of that grassroots movement undercut the organization’s earlier, democratic base, destroying the fetus of a potential national campaign for Democracy. Tolbert had bought the time he needed to prop up the façade of a powerful and vibrant party in control.

HOUSE OF CARDS

Just ask Nathan A. Ross Jr., who led his generation in organizing the country’s first Youth Political Movement. Young Ross saw and understood from several vantage points, what was in the making: for years Ross’ father had served as ‘Mayor’ of Monrovia. Under President William V.S. Tubman, who controlled almost everything (and everybody) in his reach, Ross’ level of power as mayor– or lack thereof – can only be guessed at. We might never know how much – or how little – he tried to assert himself. The old gentleman probably fared better at keeping his famous curls in place than trying to usurp any power under the autocratic Tubman.

Today, the current national leadership under Madam Ellen Sirleaf controls the mayoralty as well, one recently-departed mayor declared publicly a few months ago. And, of course, William Tolbert was mayor as well!

How do we know that? The younger Ross gave us a clue back then. He knew what a simple ‘no’ to President Tolbert’s plea for a postponement would have done: it would have blown away the house of cards that Tolbert and party-functionaries had stage-managed for years. The national leadership – little more than the municipality of Monrovia – was the real target, though we had no way of knowing it at the time. The campaign had been on the edge of making it all plain, young Ross later confided.

Neither the True Whiggers nor the opposition won anything when those three representatives handed Mr. Tolbert the momentum that the ‘Sawyer for Mayor’ campaign had built up. Losing sight of the larger picture would prove costly to the people – and to the nation!

(Stay with us.)