Charles Taylor’s Men fleeing NPP to the George Weah and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Camps

By Josephus Moses Gray
Jmoses1970@theperspective.org

The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
July 15, 2005

With barely three months to the holding of the October Legislative and Presidential Elections, there appears to be a mass exodus of stalwarts from the former ruling National Patriotic Party (NPP) of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.

A good number of the stalwarts who have withdrawn their membership from the former ruling party have already landed in other parties they perceived are likely to win the forthcoming elections.
From observation and analysis, most of the former NPP stalwarts have joined George Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) and the Unity Party of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Former NPP Chairman, Edwin Holder, and Cllr. Korboi Johnson, one time Justice Minister under Mr. Taylor are prominent among those who have left the party. L. Eugene Nagbe, Minister of Post and Telecommunications in the transitional arrangement and Bodo Wilson have also resigned from the NPP.

Besides personal reasons, those who crossed carpet have not cited any political reasons for their departure. But political pundits here have attributed this political flight to the party’s inability to capture state power coupled with recent pronouncement by NPP Chairman Lawrence George that the Party is “broke.”

The mass departure comes amid international pressure on Nigeria to handover the NPP’s “political god-father” Charles Taylor to the Special Court in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Taylor faces 17-count war crimes charges for his alleged involvement during that country’s decade-long civil war.

A coalition of up to 300 African and international civil society groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), has demanded that Nigeria surrenders Charles Taylor to the Special Court for to face prosecution