Recently, VP Taylor at an endorsement ceremony held at the Capitol said “We all know our former Vice President isn’t well, so God forbid, if Boakai dies in power, do we want to make Prince Y. Johnson who isn’t a Presidential aspirant the next President?”
Senator Prince Johnson has switched support from President Weah to former VP Boakai of the opposition Unity Party with Mr. Boakai naming the leader of Sen Johnson’s MDR party Sen. Jeremiah Koung as his running mate, a move that has developed bad blood between the ruling CDC and PYJ.
Vice President Taylor’s statement didn’t go down well with Senator Johnson, who wrote on his Facebook page that he will respond to the Vice President during his regular church service at his Christ Chapel of Faith in Paynesville outside Monrovia.
But during Sunday’s worship at the church, groups of youth from the National Patriotic Party of VP Taylor and the ruling CDC stormed the premises and disrupted the service, chanting “war crimes court, war crimes court” in apparent response to Sen. PYJ’s vehement opposition to call for the establishment of a war crimes court for Liberia to prosecute people who committed hideous crimes, like the senator, during the 14-year Liberian Civil War.
“I don’t support any 500 men going anywhere that might create more trouble”, Kotee says, adding that if Senator Johnson would have responded yesterday, several citizens would have been taken to hospital and others interred as a result of violence.
He says if Liberian politicians don’t stop the way they are proceeding, the problem that will emerge will be bigger than Ebola. “I’m saying this; I’m a senior citizen who served this country for 37 years, beginning from school principal to representative.”
He warns those in government and in opposition to not revert the country to another 14 years of war.
Kotee says it would be foolhardy for any Liberian to think that the international community will spend its taxpayers’ money on politicians’ foolishness, adding that it’s not going to happen.
At the same time, Kotee rejects PYJ’s threat to mobilize 500 men to defend himself in response to youth from the NPP of VP Taylor and the ruling CDC disrupting his church service.
“VP Taylor and Senator Johnson – none of them is on their private plantation. They work for us and if we don’t speak now, people will tote bundles on their heads again”, he warns.
He notes there are some Liberians who think they can cause chaos and escape to another country to live because they have amassed stolen wealth.
Kotee further laments that is totally shameful and disgraceful after 170 years of existence, Liberians are still backward in everything despite the abundance of natural resources the country is endowed with, principally because of corruption and bad governance.
The political atmosphere in the country of 5 million people, according to preliminary census results, is charged with politicians throwing jives at one another, including words of war, as Liberians go to elections in October. Editing by Jonathan Browne
