Safeguarding Democracy

Historically Liberia has never had a fully functioning democracy for many years. From the very early times. The settlers monopolized power and privilege.Descendants of settlers remained the dominant force for many years. They formed a one-party system, and they rigged elections, creating fake numbers and so many people were not motivated to vote. When William Taubman came to power, he ruled for 37 years.Any attempts by his predecessor, ended up became violent and people died with fake coup attempts and all of that to dispose of opponents.He however did try to make a few changes into narrowing the gap between the Americo-Liberian and indigenous people. For example, he started by shedding the top hats and tail coats, which they used to wear for formal occasion as a symbol of power and authority. To try and shift the order, Taubman came in and changed to a regular safari suits as a symbol and he also chose a vice president who was indigenous. When Taubman died his Vice President for 18 years became the president. But of course, the, the party structure did not change. It was just a changing of the guards when William Torbert came to power.

Vision for Democracy

· Sirleaf wanted a multiparty system:An open society in which people could exercise their right to choose their leaders in an environment in which they could compete effectively and not be subjected to threats, violence and infringements of their rights. Sirleaf envisioned a society where people were selected to lead based on their vision and ability to lead and not have to undergo verbal physical or even fiscal abuse.

· Competition of leadership within the political party: In many political parties, power is centered around the figure with most of the financial resources or like her, the one with the most networks. For example, in her context Sirleaf had the international contacts, because she had worked at Citi Bank and the World Bank. Therefore Sirleaf had lots of supporters and ended up being the pivot of the party. However, this takes away from building a democracy because it shuts out competition for leadership within the party structure.

· Institutional strength is important to create boundaries, so no single individual has too much power. This is a weak area in most developing countries where institutional capacity is weak.

· Media is an important element of democracy which needs to be free. But many times in small countries like Liberia, media is under capacitated and under resourced that it's so easy for them to fall under the ownership of political leaders who can take over by providing the means for the media, you know, for their sustenance to cover their operations and this can undermines competitive leadership and, freedom.

Actions Taken:

When Sirleaf became president, she could try to correct some of these, not all of it because the cultural and political environment, we're still very engrained in the past, but as much as possible, she kept pushing back the frontiers of possibility to see how far she could take the country.

2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and women's rights advocate spoke as national orator at the Independence Celebrations

· Opening up multiparty system: One thing that Sirleaf did was encourage registration of many parties. Now because of that, we ended up having large numbers of political parties. Most of these parties ended up becoming briefcase packages, so that they can have somebody who will be running for president office or as a means of bargaining for appointed positions. The formation of these parties was mostly formed around ethnic background, but that was never a very serious problem in Liberia. Although if a party is led by someone with a strong ethic background, naturally many people from that ethnic group probably would probably feel comfortable being a part of that party because they know that they could secure positions.

· Media: For one thing, Sirleaf was very conscious of the role that the media could play plan. So, the media was allowed to be totally free, but this led to a proliferation of radio stations and newspapers. But it also led to those who consider them the watchdogs of society who had to report every event sometime real and imagined. Their primary role became to expose wrong doing or exposing evils. Which itself, led to restriction of some freedoms that we wanted to have because it led to some people to be subdued. Women, for example, who didn't want their personal lived barraged in the media, shyed away.

· However, one thing that the country all agreed on is that they wanted peace. So that meant that Sirleaf would have to allow as much as possible an open society. But one challenge that Sirleaf never got to resolve was a problem that became an issue. The political, the military rulers ruled by decree. And one of the decrees was that they impose, some very harsh conditions on the media, on journalists whom they felt were taking actions, and reporting things that would destabilize the society. But that decree, Sirleaf never was able to move, although it was not a law because they have no military government, but that decree was on the books because members of our legislature, parliament did not want it remove because there was always a threat. And these were the blockages of full democracy.

· Impact: The fact that Liberians had not voted in a long time, and finally were able to have open elections. The opening brought democracy. It doted on the post conflict success that people could now vote. Sirleaf must say that in the 2005 elections, many people for the first-time people voted in their entire life, including my mother. Previously, there was no need for them to vote because they knew who the leader would be. And if one saw some of the photographs of the lines in those elections, Sirleaf mean, they were just so long. Sirleaf mean, everybody wanted to vote, this was their first opportunity. They came on foot, freely knowing that there will be no discrimination, no repercussions if they voted the way they wanted and that there was no determination.

Challenges:

· Sirleaf had to make some compromises for the sake of democracy for example some of the people she brought into her party, she knew did not have the full loyalty, but she needed diversity in many cases. In the case of the legislature, Sirleaf could have mounted political action against the warlords, especially those that did not have national interest at heart. Sirleaf knew they were there to make money. But Sirleaf also knew that if she crossed the line in opposing them or fighting them, not only did Sirleaf put her life at risk but may also put the nation at risk.

· Part of her constraints too was that to become a reformer there was a lot of political baggage collected of all those years of being an activist. There were interest groups that Sirleaf had worked with and they had expectations for her to serve their particular interests. There's just no escaping that. For example, people that supported her in in the 1985 elections who could have gotten hurt supporting her when there was no democracy and they could become targets for opposing a military government. And so, these groups become part of her extended family politically. Sirleaf had to manage all these interests and expectations.

· As tolerant as Sirleaf had been of freedom of speech, however the free voices sometimes took away from the attention that was required to achieve some of our development goals. And democracy even after Sirleaf been a part of promoting it for all these years and having had this successful political transition. As Sirleaf looks back on the basis of the potential for our country and what could have been achieved on a development front with a little more authoritarianism, it sometimes raises questions on how far can democracy go, though her core values are cemented in promoting democracy.