Boakai or Cummings?

Former Vice President of Liberia, Joseph N. Boakai, left and former Coca-Cola executive, Alexander B. Cummings.

“With Boakai around and strong, there’s no path for Cummings to win the CPP primary,” says the ANC leader’s former strategist.

The political leader of the Alternative National Congress Alexander Cummings has been advised by his former strategist to leave the Collaborating Political Parties if he wishes to run for the presidency.

According to Taa Wongbe, Cummings does not have the political weight to defeat former Vice President Joseph Boakai in a primary, and cannot lead the CPP to the 2023 general elections.

“Take this to the vault. With Boakai around and strong, there’s no path for his man winning the CPP primary. Zero chance! Even if Boakai decides today that he’s not running, they will pivot somewhere else, trust me!”

Wongbe added that the decision of his former boss to go to bed with those he called “looters and evildoers” would prove detrimental to his chance of heading the CPP in the ensuing primary.

He then claimed that in 2018, he warned Cummings that the collaboration was a very bad strategy and meant to weaken his chance of getting even closer to the presidency.

“In 2018, I advised that collaboration for ANC was a very bad strategy and was meant to weaken ABC. They said Taa is not a politician. True, I am not. I am a strategist and that’s what I do extremely well.

“However, common sense would tell you that you don’t negotiate from a position of weakness and that we were getting in bed with people we just described as looters and evildoers. But… I am a soldier. When a decision is made, I accept and soldier on. We formed the CPP,” Wongbe argued.

He suggested that if Cummings cannot go as vice President to Boakai, he should leave the CPP immediately and start crafting a new course now. 

“ABC is an amazing guy with great ideas for Liberia, but with the current configuration, it’s an uphill battle.” 

Crisis in CPP

Wongbe’s revelations come amid an altercation over the alleged ‘alteration’ of the CPP framework document. The allegation, levied by the political leader of the All Liberian Party, Benoni Urey, has rekindled the beef between Urey and Cummings.

Both parties’ leaders have not failed to hide their feelings about each other in public, and current beef between them has resulted in relentless jabs thrown involving their supporters, wielding allegations.

In a strong-worded statement, Urey complained that that certain portions and clauses within the organic framework document of the CPP have been dubiously, viciously, and purposefully altered, “allegedly by some nefarious individuals within the hierarchy of the CPP — and replaced by ‘Alien Clauses’ to engender ulterior motives.”

However, Urey remains tight-lipped about who exactly had the document altered and what parts of it were altered. According to Urey, while the ALP would not want to cast aspersions and make fast conclusions, he has obtained his information from unimpeachable sources, whose information is correct.

Urey noted that his party is cautioned not to take this information for granted because if such subversive maneuvering is not decisively foiled and diminished, the CPP must brace for a fate of fatal consequences.

“It is no gainsaying that such a despicable and woeful act, if permitted to happen, will spell upon the CPP a brazen doom,” Urey said.

But Cummings, who was not directly accused in Urey’s complaint, wasted no time to take issue with his ALP colleague, particularly given the threat that collaboration might not be held because of the change.

Rebutting Urey, the ANC political leader said although his colleague accuses no one directly, he unfairly accuses the entire CPP hierarchy indirectly, given that collaboration has been together for more than a year.

“The CPP cannot be run on mere gossip and rumors and to have such accusations in the public, more than one (1) year after our coming together, without the benefit of any internal consideration of its accuracy and validity, is strange and disturbing,” Cummings noted. 

For Cummings, the CPP need not take Urey’s allegation seriously since the claims of tempering were made without facts and specifics, but intended to evoke acrimony, “we must not allow it to.”

Shockingly, Cummings chastised his colleague for calling for an investigation, saying it is without any necessary specifics and doing so would be “the most inappropriate use of our time, resources, and the time and resources of the people we promised to serve diligently and more thoughtfully.” 

‘Cummings’ supporters should stop’

Meanwhile, Wongbe has added that if the late Cllr. Charles Walker Brumskine was alive, ANC and Cummings would not even been mentioned by now. 

Unfortunately, Brumskine passed. If he was alive and well today, ANC and ABC would not even be mentioned by now. It would have been a done deal,” he wrote. “It would have been a done deal! Just imagine if LP had Montserrado, Bassa, and Nimba…just imagine for one second! Add that to Lofa and Bong…it would have been OVER…”OVEN”…OVER.”

Wongbe warned Cummings supporters to stop pushing the concept that their party leader can win the CPP’s top spot are wasting their time.

“I see ANC diaspora supporters pushing this concept of ABC winning the primary against Boakai; Stop the shenanigans. It’s not going to happen. Never,” Wongbe noted.