Jimmy Carter monitoring the 2005 Liberia elections. Photo by Deborah Hakes.
On Monday, July 23 Charles Taylor spoke about The Carter Center (Transcript here. Stuff on TCC goes from pages 79-99.)
Taylor’s lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, introduced as evidence the TCC report on the 1997 elections. As we all know, the report said the elections were free and fair. Here’s how Taylor and Griffiths used the report:
Q. Now on that note, Mr Taylor, before we come to the substance of the report, you will recall mention being made in this Court of a slogan being used during the elections, “He killed my pa, he killed my ma, but I will vote for him”, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And do you remember it being suggested that that was as a consequence of intimidation carried out by your supporters of voters?
A. Well, that is not correct. Had that been the case the international observers would not have declared the elections free, fair and transparent. This is another one of those things that if anybody had asked what did it really mean, someone would have explained to them instead of trying to come up with their warped interpretation of what it meant. The meaning of that is
just pure and simple. Your Honours, before the election and during the process those individuals that claimed that they had nothing to do with the elections were saying that, “Don’t vote for any killers. We are the good people and they are the bad people”. So what my supporters did was to say, “Okay, great, you are calling them – you want to call them killers. You want to call them thieves. Whatever you want to call this man, if you say he killed our mother, if you say he killed our father, no matter who you say he killed we will still vote for this man because we believe in him”. That was the underline interpretation of that slogan. That regardless of whatever attachment or title or description you put against him, we will vote for him still. That’s what
that meant.
Other TCC references:
- Taylor’s lawyer noted that the TCC election report said there was an unequal playing field before the elections. Taylor justifies this as saying that his party was simply more organized than the other parties. (I read the report several years ago, so I don’t remember exactly what it said, but I imagine it said something like, “Taylor controlled most of the interior. 12 of the 13 candidates were terrified to campaign outside of Monrovia.”)
- Taylor pointed out that TCC’s election work was funded by IFES, which gets its money from the US State Department. (Does anyone know if TCC’s work was actually funded by IFES?)
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.