Liberia Voting Today; Doe’s Foes in Disarray

Election day, an event Liberians have been awaiting for years, finally comes to this poor West African nation today.

But many Liberians fear that the soldier they hailed as a liberator when he shot his way to power five years ago has rigged what he solemnly promised would be a free and fair election.

Few Liberians doubt that head of state Samuel K. Doe has come to regard that promise as the result of rash enthusiasm. And it has taken three years of steady pressure, from within Liberia and from Liberia’s international friends, chiefly the United States, to move the reluctant former army sergeant to make good on it.

Parody, Embarrassment

To many disappointed Liberians, Doe has become a parody of the corrupt old leadership that his seizure of power was designed to end. To many in the United States, his country’s foremost patron, he is an embarrassment.

It does not necessarily follow, however, that he can be defeated in the election, in which the voters will choose a president, vice president and a 90-member bicameral Congress.

A mood of pessimism prevails among Doe’s opponents, reflecting their struggles of recent weeks. The backs of candidates of opposing parties bear the wounds of whips wielded by soldiers and policemen sent out to stop their political rallies. Some candidates, after their public lashings, have been jailed for days at a time. Party workers have disappeared, with some still unaccounted for and presumed dead.

Three parties are left in the race against Doe’s National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL), but two others, which most observers believe were the most potent forces lined up against him, have been banned from taking part in the elections.

Forbidden to Speak

The leaders of these two parties, Amos Sawyer, a university professor, and Gabriel Baccus Matthews, a former foreign minister, have been forbidden to speak out on any issue relating to life in Liberia.

Regional and local government officials have regularly denied opposition parties permission to hold campaign rallies.

The so-called NDPL Task Force, a band of menacing Doe loyalists, has vandalized newspaper offices and the homes of opposition party members, disrupted rallies and seen to it that enthusiasm remains at a high pitch wherever the commander in chief puts in an appearance. The task force is expected to be on duty today as Liberians turn out to vote.

The mechanics of the voting are suspect to most of the opposition. The Special Election Commission, which is supposed to supervise the balloting, has demonstrated its loyalty to the commander in chief and has provided no real security against tampering with the election results. It was the commission that eliminated the two opposing parties from the race.

Ballots and ballot boxes may not even get to some outlying villages, since the commission began delivering them only four days ago.

Foes Disorganized

The opposition--that part of it still in the race--is disorganized and at times confused. One party, the Liberia Action Party, debated until two days ago whether to pull out of the election in order to emphasize what it considers the fraudulent nature of the process. It decided in the end that it was too late to withdraw.

The presidential candidate of the Liberia Action Party is Jackson Doe, who is not related to the incumbent. Jackson Doe is a longtime political figure who has served as an adviser to the head of state and to the leadership of the True Whig Party that had dominated Liberian political life since the nation was founded in 1848 by freed American slaves.

The descendants of those slaves, known here as Americo-Liberians, make up less than 5% of the population, but their control over the indigenous blacks was almost total until the coup led by Doe.

Over the period of Doe’s rule, U.S. aid to Liberia has increased from $11 million in 1980 to $86 million this year. Liberia, with 2.1 million people, is the third-highest recipient, per capita, of American aid in Africa (behind Egypt and Sudan).

Meanwhile, the Liberian economy has been in steady decline. Unemployment is estimated at 50% or more. Credit has been cut off by several international lending agencies. Government employees have not been paid since July.

Corruption is said to have returned to its former high level. A recent review of the Liberian budget by the International Monetary Fund noted that $48 million is not accounted for.