Liberia had been an independent nation since 1847, however, the political party True Whig Party (Whig as an acronym for We Hope in God) governed the country for over 100 years. This party was comprised mainly of American-Liberians, to my understanding, while the indigenous peoples were generally living in impoverished conditions.
"Widespread disaffection with his regime (regime of Tolbert) had been simmering for some time and led to open confrontation and violence between the Government and opposition elements last year.
Despite its name, Liberia was far from a model of freedom and democracy. President Tolbert ran a tightly controlled one-party system and it was only last year that the Progressive People's Party succeeded in getting itself registered as a political party. The True Whig Party Government had a strong oligarchical flavour, for it was led by "American-Liberians11, and it was furthermore known
that President Tolbert, his family and other Government leaders had considerable business interests. Both the political and economic life of Liberia was effectively dominated by the "American'-Liberian11 elite. Their control of the reins of power was further safeguarded by the existence of a property qualification as one of the conditions for the franchise right.
While the elite lived in relative affluence, the indigenous population was facing severe hardship. The literacy level stands at only 10 percent of the population, and medical services and infrastructural development in the rural areas are at a low level. Poverty, food shortages and large-scale unemployment were the typical symptoms of the economic ills. A drop in the world price of
iron ore, one of LiberiaTs main exports, further aggravated the situation. Under these circumstances, it was only to be expected that the granting of official permission to several thousand foreigners - particularly from Guinea and Ghana - to work in Liberia, would cause public resentment. Opponents of the Tolbert regime also seized on the fact that Liberia*s economy was dominated by foreign,
particularly American, interests. Liberia has the greatest number of large foreign controlled business corporations in Africa - an estimated five out of every seven. This has led to charges of foreign exploitation of Liberia*s resources."
http://dspace.africaportal.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/30969/1/Brief%20Report%20No.26.pdf?1
Unfortunately, the coup did not lead to the desired results. Instead it began a long time span of war between tribes/groups within Liberia who were trying to gain control after this militant group initially overthrew the government.
http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/cabinet-ministers-lined-executed-coup-detat-liberia-1980/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/22/newsid_2525000/2525477.stm
Kayla,
ReplyDeleteI too found this background information very helpful in understanding the situation that Toni lived through. Thank you for posting it. After I read through the 1980's information, I was curious as the the current state of affairs for Liberia. From what I was able to find, the country now hosts over 20 different political parties. From my understanding, the people revolted in order to gain more political representation. They now have plenty. So, this begs the questions, can a revolution go too far?
Also, I am curious as to the role of the United States in this state of affairs. Liberia has a historically strong tie with the United States and I wonder if this tie led to an undercurrent in this coup. I also wonder if this strife led to some of the revolutions we are seeing in current day Africa. How can this one revolution effect so many, if it even did?
Kayla,
ReplyDeleteI am also glad you posted this background information which I found very interesting! Although the coup did not lead to the desired results, do you think it is still a positive revolution? The people made an effort to make a change and made their position known to the government, so is that alone a success?
Sean,
I was also wondering about the current affairs for Liberia, and I think it's great the country now hosts over 20 political parties. I think that having a greater amount of political parties forces them to actually produce results. In the United States having just Democratic and Republican (that actually are competitive) allows the political parties to make empty promises because they know that the population will still stay loyal to them and vote in their favor. 20 political parties is a much greater pool of competition and would result in the people getting more of what they want.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteIn response to your first question, I think it can. I read an article once (I couldn't find it to post a link but I will keep looking and hopefully post it at a later date) that said that there was a fine balance between having two few political parties to be effective and also having too many to be affective. With 20 parties is a lot, can you imagine trying to get a majority vote with that many different parties? This article said that when you only have a few parties, you tend to get extremes and/or polarisation. Conversely, however, with too many it would be hard to get any consensus, there would almost be too many options for anything to get done. Essentially the sweet spot is somewhere more than the United States' 2 major parties and Liberia's 20 parties (I need to find that article to double check the exact numbers). Coming back to your question, I think one could say that Liberia's revolution went too far. They tried to give everyone a voice, up to the point where the government could be ineffective.
Emma,
Those are good questions. Honestly I don't know. I think that it was an important step that the people tried to make a change and let it be known to the government, however, I do not know if that makes it a success. In the movie we watch for this week, The Square, the people revolted and let their voices be heard that they wanted the dictator to step down. But their position did not improve because the military then took control, and after another round of protests they got yet another leader that the people (besides members of the Brotherhood) didn't like nor want. They touched on this in the movie, but the reason was that while they were demanding change, they were not presenting an alternative that they wanted. They were just saying, 'go away!' to the leader but not proposing an alternative. There was no organisation, thus in many regards the revolution failed the first two times. To bring this back to Liberia, I think that making their voices heard was an important step but I do not think that that alone created a successful revolution in the sense that the desired goals were achieved.