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Incivility
destroys spirit of OLM's presidential race
Friday,
November 30, 2007
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
I
don't live in the State of Minnesota nor am I a voting
member of the Organization of Liberians in Minnesota (OLM),
but my inbox is taking a hit from the tons of e-mails I
receive daily (courtesy of the listserv) from those
who are doing all they can to elect their candidates
in the upcoming local Liberian Community elections
slated for December 2, in the “Land of 10,000
Lakes.”
We here in Georgia had our own elections in
November that had its own heated rhetoric of unproven
allegations of corruption and another about
incompetence, which was mild and did not travel into
the virtual world; a far cry from the viciousness, the
personal attacks, mudslinging and character
assassination Liberians, who are running for office in
that part of the United States are experiencing daily
that pits their campaign operatives and supporters
against the candidates from the other end of the
political spectrum they disagrees with.
Kerper Dwanyen
Martha T. Sinoe
It is “do or die” as Liberians would
say, and only the strongest can or will survive in
such a climate of intolerance and negativity, where
the core issues that divides the candidates, or the
issues supposedly espoused by the candidates to help
Liberians and their community are not being fully
discussed.
The insults and putdowns are so intense it
is distractive and shields the candidates from being
genuinely scrutinized as to what candidate (a) intends
to do for Liberians as compared to what candidate (b)
also wants to do for Liberians if elected for the
OLM’s presidency, which overshadows the main event.
And if the candidates were ever scrutinized, there
responses are often buried in the confusion that
grasps the community in this election season making it
even difficult to decipher what in the world the
individuals are talking about, and how they are ever
going to accomplish their plans for the community.
I want to believe Liberians in the state of
Minnesota are politically shrewd and savvy enough to
enshrine in their Constitution and by-laws what is
expected of their candidates running for those
venerable positions in their community. If that is so
true, I want to also believe the candidate’s
previous lives were vetted before they were
green-lighted to run for the positions in question.
Now if the candidate’s pasts were checked for
drug abuse, rebel activities and other criminal
activities when they declared their intentions to run
for office the first time, and the allegations were
substantiated and corroborated, why didn’t somebody,
somewhere within the political hierarchy of the
Organization of Liberians in Minnesota (OLM) declared
the candidate or candidates ineligible to run for
office, (if they found incriminating evidence) and not
wait until days, weeks and months before the elections
to send out an avalanche of e-mails subjecting all of
us in the listserv virtual community the inconvenience
of reading the equivalent of pornographic materials
masquerading as campaign literatures sent daily into
our inboxes?
I don’t know if he did anything
about it but if OLM were a member of the Union of
Liberian Associations in the Americas (ULAA), I would
think ULAA boss, Emmanuel Wettee would have
immediately injected himself into the fray by
mediating and speaking to the parties to halt the
internecine verbal slugfest, and not allow it to drag
on forever. I even expected the candidates to jump in
and warn their supporters to stop attacking the other
side so viciously in their names, which would have
been the most politically prudent thing to do. But as
the saying goes, I guess they all believed perhaps
that the enemy of the other person’s enemy is the
other person’s friend.
However, having run for president in
Georgia in my previous life and won, I know what it is
like to face scrutiny day in and day out come election
season from one’s colleagues on the other side of
the political spectrum.
It is one thing to face legitimate
scrutiny and another to be constantly insulted and
denigrated by others as they are doing to presidential
candidates Martha Sinoe, whom I don’t know
personally, and Kerper Dwanyen, whom I also don’t
know either. You can now read few of the emails from my inbox
about the candidates.
Item: “Martha Sinoe busted for cocaine;
Martha Sinoe ran away from queen contest, Martha Sinoe
born by uncle, Martha Sinoe house in foreclosure.”
Item: “Kerper Dwanyen a former rebel, Kerper Dwanyen
mobilizes gangsters for election 2007.”
It is an admirable gesture when Liberians
run for those voluntary and non-paying political
positions in their respective communities far away
from their native country. When something like that
happens, we all should be proud of them and appreciate
their efforts because it shows those Liberians are
interested in helping their communities, no matter
what we think about them at a time when others are
saying, “I don’t want to be bother with
Liberians” and are staying away from “those
Liberians” they don’t want to see because
“Liberians are not good,” they often say.
However, when we attack those who volunteer their
services for no apparent reason for these non-paying
jobs, why would others want to be bother to run for
office for a position that pays them nothing but gave
them headache by washing their laundries in public?
I think the passion for community politics
among Liberians in Minnesota is great and indeed
enviable and should be applauded. But when we deviate from the core issues
about helping our people during elections and result
to personal attacks, it makes all of us (Liberians)
look bad, it destroys the spirit of the
presidential race and shows our obvious lack of class
and ideas to address the fundamental issues that
separates us from our political opponents.
We can do
better, folks.
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