Filed in by Olando Testimony Zeongar – 0776819983/0880-361116/life2short4some@yahoo.com
Monrovia – The campaign launch of the candidate of four collaborating political parties, ALP, UP, LP and ANC, in the 8 July Montserrado senatorial by-election, vocal politician Abraham Darius Dillon (ADD), is being delayed due to ADD campaign team’s inability to raise the fund needed to do so, sources have told Punch online service.
According to sources, Dillon’s campaign team, has estimated close to half of a million United States dollars to run a elaborate campaign, in a bid to have the collaborating parties’ candidate elected, as he takes his second shot at winning a seat at the 30-member Liberian Senate.
Dillon first attempted occupying a seat at the Senate when he unsuccessfully contested the senatorial by-election of 10 November 2009, coming a distant fifth in an election won by then Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) candidate, the late Geraldine Doe-Sheriff.
At the time, Doe-Sheriff won the highest number of more than 95,000 votes cast, accounting for 33,874 or 35.5 percent, while Clemenceau Urey, brother to the leader (Benoni Urey) for the four collaborating parties of which Dillon is their candidate in the 8 July senatorial by-election in Montserrado, placed second with 29.7 percent or 28,329 votes.
University professor and current Minister of Commerce Wilson Tarpeh came third with 16.3 percent or 15,555 of votes counted, followed by former warlord Alhaji Kromah with 7 percent or 6,729 votes, and Darius Dillon polling just 5.7 percent or 5,148 votes.
When contacted via phone Tuesday, and asked to react to reports that he is broke and that his campaign launch is being delayed for the lack of needed cash, Dillon angrily told Punch online service; “Okay the people who saying it [I] tell them thank you. I ain’t here to come clarify all kinds of things.”
He declined responding to further questions from our Executive Editor, as Dillon hung up abruptly while other questions were being posed to him subsequently.
Reports of Dillon’s campaign is cash-strapped, come few days following warning from businessman cum politician Musa Hassan Bility, who recently cautioned that if what he calls the fundamentals are not changed, the governing CDC would as usual win both by-elections *senatorial and representative in Montserrado on 8 July.
Bility averred that ADD is being betrayed by the UP, LP, ALP and ANC, as far as Dillon’s quest to winning the upcoming Montserrado County senatorial by-election is concerned.
He said with the exception of the political leaders of both the ALP and ANC, Messrs. Benoni Urey and Alexander Cummings, whom he said are making some personal moves, no combined concrete institutional effort is being exerted by the four parties to support Dillon’s campaign.
“I have the feeling that Dillon has been betrayed by the Parties. With exception of Mr. Cummings and Mr. Urey who have made some individual efforts, the efforts of collaboration is yet to be felt in this campaign,” Bility wrote on his official Facebook page Saturday.
