Monrovia- Liberia February 12, 2021: A Commentary Written By Julius Kullie Kanubah a Liberian Journalist Studying In Germany

The business of Liberty Party is now in the hands of a businessman. The businessman in question is almost always associated with some of the major public and private sectors financial scandals in postwar Liberia. His name is Musa Bility.

Musa Bility is known both domestically and internationally as a man with an inherently spoiled character. If you think this is a joke, just make a simple check on Google search engine with one of the following combined words: Musa Bility and Corruption; Musa Bility and Fraud; Musa Bility and Corrupt Practices; Musa Bility and Ellen Cockrum RIA scandal.

As you might have found, there are hundreds of articles describing the incredibly scandalous character of Musa Bility. To say Musa Bility is corrupt, a fraud, an abuser of public trust and a man who always operates with criminal intent may perhaps be a gloss over the devastating effects of the dangerous practices of Musa Bility. Corruption according to incoming World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is dangerous, and fighting corruption is equally dangerous, argues Okonjo-Iweala, the former Minister of Finance, and Foreign Affairs of the oil-rich African giant, Nigeria.

If corruption is dangerous and Musa Bility is always associated with corruption, questions obviously arise as to the social, political, economic, environmental, and international implications of the ascent of Musa Bility to the Chairmanship of the Liberty Party. The Liberty Party, like any partially institutionalized opposition political organization, is a ruling party in waiting.

Although the implications are obviously known in a sense that a corrupt Chairman of an opposition party will be a corrupt Chairman if his party wins public power, what we don’t know is how and why Musa Bility has come to be the face of the Liberty Party to the extent he has easily captured one of the most singularly powerful positions within the Liberty Party. The Chairman of any major political party as the Liberty Party has significant influence to shape not only the affairs of the Party, but importantly the governance process of the country, if the Party succeeds in getting elected at the Presidency and in the Legislature.

It is within this context that the ascent of Musa Bility has sparked wider interest in the Liberty Party since the death of its integrity-driven and respectable Leader, Charles Brumskine. Brumskine, in his public life, strove to advance the ideals of exemplary citizenship underpinned by norms and rules of fairness and impartiality as well as transparency, accountability and responsibility, with a care for wider public interest than the parochial interests of greedy men.

Though Brumskine was a smart Leader, what we don’t know until now is whether he had a political relationship with Musa Bility and the extent and nature of such relationship. Was Musa Bility one of the the major financial contributors to the Brumskine push for the Liberian presidency? Who were and are the major financiers of the Brumskine Liberty Party?

These are some initial questions that come about especially as the Liberty Party now has two factions in the wake of the easy capture of the Party by Musa Bility. One faction is led by Nyonblee Karnga-Lawrence and Abe Darius Dillon – both of whom easily gave-in to Musa Bility and approved his capture of the Party; thereby placing the Party in a cave of a corrupt network. The other faction seems, as yet, to lack a Leader but it advances its disenchantment and way forward under the banner of the respectable politically intellectually sophisticated group, Friends of Brumskine while also incorporating the label Original Founders of the Liberty Party. This group communicates widely on social media and in the press through Isaac W. Jr. Jackson. – the Man who holds at heart the original Liberty Party so dearly, although he did fall out of favor and callously engaged in a dishonourable public verbal sparring with Brumskine after having been apparently co-opted by the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf presidency.

What is interesting about the two factions of the Liberty Party is that, both have had high regard for Brumskine and both have had some ugly sparring with Brumskine in the public. Indeed, like Isaac Jackson, it is also the case that Dillon also abandoned Brumskine after also having been co-opted by the Presidency of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf through her lovely spoiled son, Robert Sirleaf, who was not only a Senior Presidential Adviser to his Mother-President, but also the Executive Board Chairman of the once multi-million National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) – a public company the Sirleafs led into bankruptcy after series of financial scandals.

The two factions of the Liberty Party can thus best be characterized as:

1) The Brumskine Libertarians; and 
2) The Nyonblee-Dillon Cartel.

The Brumskine Libertarians collectively consists the Friends of Brumskine and some Original Founders of the Liberty Party, and perhaps some newly nurtured Libertarians. This group is likely not to be well-positioned within the Liberty Party as it appears they are largely operating a shadow network of Libertarians outside the Party governing structures. It is in this sense that one of the first acts of the group in the wake the Musa Bility coronation was to immediately effectively move-in through an appointment of the respectable former Margibi Senator, Clarice A. Jah, a powerful woman who served the Liberty Party in a dignified and respectable way at the Legislature. Clarice, as a Senator, did Chair the powerful position of Rules and Order Chairperson of the Senate. She believes in human values and was an Activist-Senator, leading the charge for spaces of governance for Women and socially marginalized groups. Clarice is a centrist and a modernist. She knows the art of politics: negotiation, accommodation, compromises, cooperation, contestation, and public interest. Of course, she had and has her own shortcomings, as human.

If Clarice has accepted her new role as interim Chairperson of the Liberty Party in place of Musa Bility as announced by the Brumskine Libertarians, it would raise some important questions: what has been her roles in the Liberty Party prior to her appointment and what does she know about Musa Bility and all financiers of the Liberty Party during and after Brumskine? Has she, like other Brumskine Libertarians, been on the sidelines in disenchantment and now capitalizing on the wrong path taken by the current leaders of the Brumskine Liberty Party in order to make a stake in the Party?

Meanwhile, in terms of characteristics, the second faction of the Liberty Party is composed of some of the last faces of Brumskine. This group led by Nyonblee Karnga-Lawrence and Darius Dillon did succeed in ensuring that Brumskine left the Liberty Party in their hands as Brumskine suffered his third Presidential defeat in the 2017 elections. In this way, as Brumskine took his usual break as the yet again defeated Standard Bearer of the Liberty Party, the mantle of authority was passed over to Senator Nyonblee Karnga-Lawrence as Political Leader. This arrangement was and is suspect at best and at worst, dangerous, even as Brumskine himself did sanction it. Mechanisms of accountability, transparency and responsibility in the Liberty Party are definitely undermined under such arrangement, especially when publicly elected officials of the Legislature are the very and same people occupying elected positions in their Party structures. It is even problematic that the newly ordained Secretary General of the Liberty Party is the Chief of Staff in the Office of Senator Darius Dillon, who together with Nyonblee wield structural power in the Liberty Party. It shows that those with power in the Liberty Party have captured every power of the party – whether in Government or in the Liberty Party. This is simply an exclusionary structure in the Nyonblee-Dillon faction of the Liberty Party, which is worrisome. If Liberty Party is lucky enough to capture state power, it means those in power in the Party will correspondingly wield power in the Government of Liberty Party – so help us God! This is the same Liberty Party of Nyonblee and Dillon criticizing George Weah for his Government of Party zealots. The parallel and portend could not be more vivid.

At least for now, what we know about the two factions of the Liberty Party tells us that the tensions in the party are likely to continue with intensity, especially if the yet again re-invigorated never-die Friends of Brumskine and Original Founders of the Liberty Party continue their push against the apparently questionable practices of the Nyonblee-Dillon Cartel of the Liberty Party. A political party is always a Cartel as students of politics know best. That Nyonblee and Dillon now collectively runs a Cartel should not be taken as a surprise. What is surprising is to allow the business of Liberty Party to be captured by a businessman with a spoiled character. Perhaps, Liberians are lucky to see one of the potential sources of the dark side of the financial backbone of the Liberty Party. But who cares?

We know Brumskine is dead. If the death of Brumskine would not mean the death of Liberty Party underpinned by the virtues of Brumskine, then, both the diehard Friends of Brumskine and the Original Founders of the Liberty Party as well as the Nyonblee-Dillon Cartel would need to come clean about the past and present dealings of the Liberty Party. The risks for Liberia and Liberians are too high when political parties and political actors trade in dirty deals and allow apparently ill-gotten wealth of business and businessman to buy an entire party governing structure as the case of Liberty Party is persuasively illustrating.