By: Ekena Nyankun Juahgbe-Droh Wesley
Senator James Biney of Maryland County is among the various brigades of cadres who had become acculturated to now incarcerated Charles Taylor’s doctrine of controversial revolutionary tendencies. Was Charles Taylor a true revolutionary? Not really! The peculiarity that engrossed Liberia’s nightmare presumably might have defined Taylor along such fringes. Controversially, he cannot be likened to the great Capt. Thomas Sankara of what was then Upper Volta or the late John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana.
In spite of Charles Taylor’s grotesque embellishments or influence on his adherents – of which Biney was an integral part, Biney brought to the fold his unique characteristics as an unassuming politician of strategic significance as it were. As a politician; Biney manifests a semblance of the traits of Liberia’s William V.S. Tubman, Williams R. Tolbert’s progressive inclinations, Charles Taylor’s daring political zealotry, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s political shrewdness and calculation.
Biney, undoubtedly is a political brain trust! A man of immense political prowess, a greater communicator and manipulator of considerable influence. Groomed as a foot-soldier in Charles Taylor’s so-called attempt to transition from a war machine to political establishment after every effort to take Liberia by violent means was crushed, Biney and his likes went through the rudiments of what became the National Patriotic Youth Movement (NPYM) and later the National Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 90s. Biney’s political godfather, Charles Taylor, fiercely demonized and bastardized as recalcitrant, a war-monger and a courageous bandit – he mobilized war weary like-intellectual minds who would simply adhere to his whims and caprices.
If Biney ever learned anything ferocious attributable from his former political messiah – now serving more than 50 years jail term in the United Kingdom, it is the trait of ‘valor unpretending’ and political unpredictability. For those in the NPP who could not face the late Cllr. Theophilus C. Gould but resorted to murmurs – it took the courage of James Biney to unseat the deceased at the Temple of Justice. The late T.C. Gould had become a perpetual Chairman who resisted every attempt to hold elections.
Addressing staffers at the Capitol last week, Chairman James Biney told an ecstatic cum rapturous crowd of Pro-Boakai supporters – Biney recalled how it took his ingenuity in 2016 to make two separate visits to the U.S. State Department aimed at as strategic rebranding Taylor’s near collapsed National Patriotic Party.
Biney told the jammed packed auditorium at the Capitol that there are two groups of NPP partisans; those he lambasted as ‘lawless’ and those he passionately described as ‘on the side of the law.’ Without naming anyone – he was apparently referring to Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor-led faction, which was catapulted into staging a palace coup at the behest of the Weah-led establishment. Biney, without wasting time, immediately headed for the Supreme Court to challenge what he called work of lawless maroons.
James Biney, although a political-diplomat, is however, a subtle and unpredictable fighter who thinks threefold whoever his adversaries. Biney is an unwavering political genius! He is responsible for the marriage between the NPP-CDC after intense and rigorous intra-NPP horse-trading at the dislike of hardliners in the NPP. Biney was the mover and shaker behind the CDC-NDPL ticket that saw Cllr. Winston Tubman at the head of the line in 2011.
Whether his critics agree or disagree, Biney thinks, conceives of, contrives, constructs, and de- constructs strategies and counter strategies while his political foes are asleep. While the CDC was largely a party of populist inclinations, it took the political acumen, ambidexterity, hindsight and brilliance of James Biney to transition from mere slogans to strategic political think-tanking that brought the difference, which changed the trajectory of 2017. Men of wisdom and logic had replaced vague political santa clausing with real ideals and ideas for winning elections.
With barely four months to Liberia’s general and presidential elections, Weah and his CDC could be treading a wrong footing by backing a palace coup to topple the legitimate leader of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Party. Already, the regime is dogged by cluelessness, incompetence, rampant corruption, joblessness and scores of unfulfilled promises – a senseless political war within could further exacerbate the coalition’s looming cracks and worsen its occasioning and visible Achilles Heel. With Biney’s battle-readiness activated, the Jewel Howard Taylor faction now backed by the establishment must brace for a long haul, which is likely to see a wrecked boat pretty soon. Meanwhile, the ding dong continues…
