PHOTO: Doe and his PRC colleagues
By Worlea-Saywah Dunah
The Liberia progressive renewal has become urgent. Baccus Mathews, no other persons, in 2004 said that there was distrust of the progressive by the masses: “…given what has happened to all of us, and to the country at large, there is a well-founded reservation in calling on progressives to lead the process of renewal”.
In the 2005 elections, none of the progressive candidates generated a momentum including Mathews himself confirmed his analysis.
An unexamined life is not worth living, thundered a Greek philosopher; and elsewhere another warns that “those who ignores their history are doomed to repeat it” and if I may add, and repeat it in more virulent and disastrous fashion. And so is the event of April 12, 1980: it was a not only a night of momentous events but a night that lives with us even still as a nation.
Thus it was a critical juncture and its analysis is key to the issue of progressive and national renewal. The events of that night is Liberia’s most seismic critical juncture as its ramifications still rules all aspects of our national lives.
Since 2006 every April 12 is characterized by copious annual recitations by bit part players; yet there is scarcity of literature from the key actors. The routine litany of the vagaries of that fated night filling the airwaves has continued this month however the lessons learnt, the mistakes made and the historical near misses and its impact on our body polity is always missing.
April 12, 1980, the Seismic Critical Juncture of Liberia
Theirs was to make decisions that night; that history has paralyzed the progressive cause. Ours is to glean lessons for renewal of the progressive cause in Liberia. Forty years, a generation ago I can say, the comrades donned the camouflage pretending to be army officers; sixteen years ago the foremost icon of that era admitted errors. The old comrades are determined to be buried with the truths of that night; we have a duty to analyze that story; for their decisions and its ramifications hold us in its iron grips
True that the seventeen enlisted men managed to kill President Tolbert; their courage perhaps driven by the heightened fears in the population that once again the settlers minority regime as it has continuously done in its one hundred and thirty-three years history was set to execute the new indigenous leaders. The rumor mills had it that the jailed progressive leaders will be executed either before President Tolbert goes to Zimbabwe or while he’s there. Every indigenous group has a history of execution of its chiefs by the ruthless settlers hegemony; they know of their capacity for brutal eliminations of each other in power struggles as was in the case of the ghastly killings of David Coleman and his son in a fake coup plot in 1955.
Poignant as these historical lessons were that created a palpable tension in the country, decisive as the intervention of that simple band of enlisted men were, the historic political seism was the decision of the men liberated from the jail: the conscious decision of the liberated progressive leaders to join the coup makers in forming a governing a coalition!
Baccus Matthews confirmed the formation of the coalition on April 14, 2004 in a Press Statement quoted above entitled: My Role in the Past, My Historical Obligation to the Present, in these words: “One of the acts of the coup makers was to order the release of all political prisoners, upon daybreak, we were released and I was invited to meet with them. I went accompanied by two other party leaders. We told them that we would cooperate with them in exchange for a commitment from them to help the Liberian people get a multiparty constitution.”
Critical juncture are decisive point in history where key actors have intense short period to select an option amongst others equally attractive choices which leads to a path that would steers the economic, cultural and ideological direction of the organization or country for a length of time. Theorists agreed that options that historically were available but rejected by the actors are qualified for analysis because these choice points not taken could have had equally different monumental impact on the body polity of the nation.
So James Mahoney concluded thus: “Once a particular option is selected it becomes progressively more difficult to return to the initial point where multiple alternatives were still available.” The decision to join a coalition was therefore a point of no return as the history we have witnessed confirmed.
At that critical juncture the options were simple: join them; don’t join but recognize them and make demands; don’t join and don’t recognize but demand terms; or take it since the coup makers wanted to make Matthews President that morning.
The die was cast and lost: the masses looked to their leaders; but the leaders showed new heroes. It is still inconceivable within the context of the huge nationwide consciousness they built, the sweeping broom of change that Monrovia fell madly in love with and their undisputed status as the anointed leaders of the people that at the moment of truth commitment to peaceful democratic change was abandoned.
The Decisions and the Path of Liberia Since
While the masses slept virtually unknown enlisted men from the base of the decrepit army killed the President and their leaders granted legitimacy to the killers by consenting to work with the coup makers. At that precise moment of that choice selection when the organized political oppositions took the decision to join the coup makers in organizing a military regime and to assume military ranks the floor was laid for the paths Liberia will follow. History is still confounded that Liberia’s foremost advocates for peaceful democratic elections as the means of change and reforms of governance were overnight transformed into a military-civilian coalition government presiding over a bloody transition.
Out of the above came the acceptance for violence as the route to state power; it became the roman road to power that the period 1980 to 2003 is littered with brutal conflicts in the bid to seize power. Even fourteen years after return to full democratic rule group of Liberians still seeking to use street violence to force a regime change.
The second decision concerns a fundamental cornerstone of democracy was the suspension of the constitution to rule by military decrees. The Constitution of 1847 with tis various amendments was basically democratic; under its provisions the PAL had transformed into the Progressive People’s Party(PPP) and had served as the reliance for their advocacy. Its suspension provided therefore a perfect animal farm scenario: Liberians looked back at over centuries of disregard for that constitution by the settlers governments and now looked to see their progressive leaders trashing the same constitution and imposing harsh undemocratic military decrees.
As the civilian cabinet of the late President Tolbert had changed place with the progressives in the notorious post stockade prison along with key legislative and judiciary leaders, their fate was a crucial path decision. Surprisingly the new coalition government decided to prosecute them using martial laws in a military tribunal on charges of rampant corruption, abuse of powers, gross violations of human rights amongst others. All of the accused, thirteen altogether, including cabinet members, the Speaker, the Senate Pro Tempore, members of the legislature, the Chief Justice were found guilty and sentenced to public executions. They were accordingly executed on light poles by a firing squad reminiscent of the Bolshevik revolution but here children were among the crowd. The execution elevated the coalition government as one of the bloodiest coup in Africa; some tragic aspect is that the progressive Justice Minister who guided it all had his foster father and his predecessor at the Ministry of Justice amongst those tried and executed.
The last crucial action was the mass employment of followers, friends and relations of the new political leaders in government regardless of qualifications was instituted. Some, even college students, were given high cabinet level posts. According to Cletus Wotorson in his memoir, The Acceptance, his successor as Minister at the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy was a man he knew as warehouse staff for the Bong Mines Company.
The Chosen Paths Still Rules Liberia
Overtime in the years since Liberia has witnessed and borne the vagaries and outrageous fortunes of the decisions of that fated night. We have had wars; but the warlords were mostly coalition majors: Major Charles Taylor of NPFL notoriety; Major George Boley of Liberia Peace Council, responsible for Zahn Zahnyee massacre; Major Alhaji Kromah of ULIMO whose fighters used human intestines as ropes for checkpoints; Major Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr of inchoate faction plus multitudes of their followers like the late Samuel Dokie and others.
The culture of gun violence, public executions, massacres etc littered the pages of that period starting with the execution of the General Weh Syen the Vice President of the coalition; eventually its strongman General Quiwonkpa died trying to return the soldiers to barracks.
It is common knowledge that the burgeoning civil service is the result of the continuous influx of relations, friends and followers of political leaders with every new government. This practice, now a generally accepted norm of governance in Liberia, is one of the paths of April 12, 1980 that holds the nation in iron fist and undermines the development of a professional civil service.
Extra-judicial killings as a characteristic of the settlers state and reinforced by the coalition of 1980 ruled the war years and now reifies as mob justice. Criminal run to the nearby police station or else they face certain death simply because the national psyche has inculcated the culture of ‘quick justice’; and as it was in the 133 years settlers rule and the execution on the pole, it must be every day.
Finally The Road Not Taken…
Inarguably one thing is irrefutable here: the key actors of the fated April 12, 1980 night, enlisted men and progressives, can choose to die with their story; but certainly they cannot long thwart the scientific analyses of their historic role that night and thereafter in their coalition government and its ramifications on the body polity of Liberia as well as the towering impacts it has had since on our national lives.
And then Frost captured it well: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,…..And both that morning equally lay….In leaves no step had trodden black.” At that critical juncture of Liberian history truly there were alternatives and that remains the basis of analysis; the road taken continues to impact the body polity nearing half a century.
Finally, the road not taken that night will guide our new paths choice selections because denial has never led to renewal. The historic task of flaming a progressive renewal as Mathews alluded to starts from objective look in the mirror to grasp the lessons and chart a new path; maybe the masses will turn to trust progressives like in the 1970s which trust eroded in the April 12, 1980 coup aftermath.
*Worlea-Saywah Dunah is a new progressive leader of the post conflict era, a founding executive of the New Deal Movement, the progressive party that resisted the Charles Taylor misrule; served twelve years in the House of Representatives from 2006 to 2018, rising to Chairman on Judiciary and Head of Delegation to the ACP –EU Parliamentary Assembly; and currently a practicing lawyer and independent consultant. Email: saywahd@yahoo.com