LIBERIA’S POLITICAL HISTORY IS littered with the wreckage of leaders who chose ethnic and personal loyalty over national cohesion. The latest warning sign is the brand of politics now being advanced by Deputy Speaker Thomas P. Fallah through the National Independent Movement for Boakai (NIMBO). Fallah’s trajectory is striking. He rose through the ranks of the Congress for Democratic Change, serving as Vice Chairman for Operations. The CDC’s structure, base, and political capital gave him a platform, visibility, and leverage that made him a national figure. Now he has broken ranks, launched a support group for his uncle, President Joseph Boakai, and openly declared that CDC’s influence in Lofa County will be “drastically reduced” by 2029.
THAT ALONE IS NOT unusual in Liberian politics because we are aware that defections happen. What is dangerous is the framing and the method, turning a political party into a family project, by establishing NIMBO as a vehicle to secure Boakai’s re-election is not inherently wrong. But when the movement is built around kinship and presented as an extension of the presidency, it risks replacing party politics with patronage and clan allegiance.
IN OUR WIDEST COGITATION, Liberia does not need another structure where loyalty to a leader’s bloodline outweighs loyalty to policy, institution, or country. That is how tribal politics gets institutionalized. Denigrating the platform that made him is the worst of betrayal ever recorded in recent political history. Fallah’s public statements dismissing CDC as known and beatable, and his claim that the party’s influence in Lofa will collapse, read less like political strategy and more like an attempt to erase the ladder he used to climb. It sends a message to younger politicians that alliances are disposable and that survival depends on switching sides at the right moment. It is a trend that erodes trust in political institutions and encourages opportunism over principle.
LEST HE FORGETS THAT his actions are typical of reopening old wounds in Lofa whose political landscape has long been shaped by ethnic and regional identities. It is mind-boggling that for a senior figure to publicly declare that he knows “CDC’s message and strategies” and that they cannot withstand NIMBO’s resistance is to frame the 2029 contest as a confrontation rather than a competition. In a county still healing from the scars of civil conflict, that language is reckless in our view. It invites supporters to see politics as a zero-sum battle between blocs, not a contest of ideas.
OF COURSE, THERE IS a danger when politicians build movements around family ties and define opponents as enemies to be crushed at the “barricade,” they weaken democratic norms. They make it harder for parties to function as vehicles for policy debate, and easier for ethnic identity to become the primary lens for political choice. Except he does not know that Liberia has paid the price for that before. There is no denying that Fallah is within his rights to support his uncle and to leave the CDC. But the way he is doing it, by personalizing the presidency, disparaging his former party, and making combative claims about Lofa’s future, sets a precedent that undermines national unity.
WE STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT Liberia needs politics that transcends tribe and family. It needs leaders who will strengthen institutions rather than replace them with personal vehicles. If Fallah’s brand becomes the norm, the country will drift back toward the politics of loyalty over law, and kinship over competence. The question for Liberians is simple. Do we want a politics of nation-building, or a politics of acculturation where every leader creates a clan-based support group and declares war on the last one? Of course, the answer will shape 2029 and beyond.
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