By: Julius Konton
Every election season in Liberia plays out like a recycled drama: campaign promises flood the air, t-shirts are tossed into crowds, bags of rice change hands and hope briefly rises.
Then the ballots are counted and reality crashes back.
According to him, the roads don’t improve,
Hospitals stay empty of medicine,
Youth unemployment skyrockets while Liberians sigh, “We elected the wrong leader again.
But one vocal activist is calling out what he believes to be the uncomfortable truth.
“Liberia does not lack leaders,” says activist Tennie Kormazu Kparzarwalah Jallah. “Liberia lacks voters who vote with vision,
“A Plate of Rice for a Five-Year Suffering” he said.
In conversation with our reporter, He accused politicians of weaponizing poverty.
In a pointed interview, Jallah criticized Liberia’s election culture, describing it as transactional and short-sighted.
“Politicians buy votes because voters are willing to sell them,” Jallah said.
“Rice today, regret tomorrow.”
According to him, Liberian elections are not decided by policies or ideas, but by desperation, a system he says politicians exploit masterfully.
He named, A bag of rice, A few hundred dollars and A promise that evaporates once power is secured.
“The rice runs out. The money finishes. But the poverty remains.” Activist Jallah added.
“Stop Voting For Who Feeds You Today, Vote For Who Builds Your Tomorrow”, he warned.
At the same time, he challenges the youth to choose ideas, not handouts
Jallah calls on Liberia’s majority youth population to abandon what he calls “survival-style voting.”
He warns that Liberia’s future depends on a new mindset:
“Leadership is not charity. Leadership is responsibility.” Jallah reminded the young people of Liberia.
Moreover, He urges young voters to ask candidates tough questions to include;
What is your 10-year vision for Liberia?
How will you create jobs and fix the economy, beyond slogans?
How will you be held accountable?
According to him, this level of scrutiny is the only way Liberia can escape its cycle of disappointment.
The youth he emphasized hold the Power, but do they Understand It, he wondered.
“The youth are the majority,” Jallah emphasized.
“But majority without direction is danger.”
He told our reporter that tribal voting, personality politics, and vote-buying are destroying the nation’s progress.
“Don’t vote for someone because they speak your dialect.
Vote for someone who speaks your dreams”, he re-emphasized.
Explaining further he stressed that changing Presidents Won’t Save Liberia buth rather changing the Mindsets of the people especially the youthful ones, he believes will do for the nation and its struggling population.
Additionally, he claimed that Liberia’s disaster isn’t political, it’s psychological.
“Liberia keeps replacing failure with failure,” he said. “Not because better leaders don’t exist, but because we refuse to choose them.”
He urged young Liberians to treat their vote as a tool for transformation, not a survival strategy.
“Liberia doesn’t lack leaders. Liberia lacks future-minded voters”, he maintained.
Jallah ended with a challenge to the nation:
“Stop using poverty as an excuse to vote poorly, Vote like the future matters.” he added.
