PHOTO: Nearly abandoned CDC HQ seen nowadays
By Alfred Kollie, alfredkolliejr92@gmail.com
“What has happened to my party, what is going on, is it that the people tire with us or we are not working in their interest”? Those were some of the unanswered questions kept echoing when our reporter recently visited the ruling CDC headquarters in Monrovia’s Congo Town suburb.
Nearly three months on, the area is practically empty in terms of human presence; aside from the sight of kids playing football and petty traders sitting at their tables.
President George Weah’s once crowd-pulling party suffered massive defeat at the polls in the December 8, 2020 Special Senatorial elections across Liberia.
The heavy lost at the polls came in the wake of a groundswell of rift in the CDC, with some party stalwart being disenchanted over being marginalized and not being given jobs some three years about the party came to power on January 22, 2018. Some speak of a class system being entrenched by a few of the party leaders in strategic government positions.
This venue which hosts the much talked about “Sycamore Tree”, the words first applied by the party’s Chairman Mulbah Morlue to refer to the their main meeting ground, was once the busiest political party head office in the country up to the time the CDC began sustaining back-to-back defeats in by elections including two successive memorable ones.
This was true to the extent that even after being beaten twice by Unity Party (UP), they remained active by organizing events which kept often kept party busy up to the ascendency of their political leader George M. Weah to the presidency.
Weah lost to former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the very first time he joined the presidential race in the October 2005 elections, managing only 40.6% of total votes cast, as opposed to Madam Sirleaf who obtained 59.4%.