By Jonathan O. Grigsby| Contributing writer
As campaign activities officially begin Liberia for the 2023 legislative and presidential elections, the National Civil Society Council of Liberia (NCSCL) has called on electoral stakeholders, mainly political parties and independent candidates, to approach the campaign with the construct of peace and nonviolence.
The council also wants candidates ensure that the rights of women participating in the process are guaranteed and respected from start of the campaign to finish.
Council is reminding political actors to desist from engaging into acts that undermine the peace and tranquility of the state, such as spewing hate messages against one another, inciting the youthful population to violence and bullying women political candidates.
“It will be considered a bad politics if political parties and/or independent candidates incite their foot soldiers to damage campaign paraphernalia of other candidates, issue comments and/or statements that are denigrating and meant to stair commotion in the process and engage into practices that tend to scare and coward women into submission”, the council said in statement.
Furthermore, the Council is strongly calling on all traditional leaders across Liberia not to indulge into the use of tradition as an alibi to chase out women and non-society members from the campaign and electioneering processes, as doing so would amount to an infringement of the law that is punishable under Liberia’s jurisprudence.
In a statement released Friday, NCSCL said there is a need to dichotomize between tradition and politics in a way that the tradition is not used to bully others, but to protect and defend the space for the free participation of all regardless of sex, gender and ideas.
“Tradition must be used as a strong supportive glue that ups the maximum feasible participation of everyone and not to mess up the game”, adds NCSCL
The National Civil Society Council says it is aware that elections are not about enmity but a contestation of ideas over the handling of issues that matter to the electorates and the general welfare of the people and the country.
