Filed in by Olando Testimony Zeongar – 0776819983/0880-361116/life2short4some@yahoo.com
Monrovia – Opposition politician and senatorial candidate for four collaborating political parties; UP, LP ANC and ANC, in the ensuing 8 July by-election for a vacant seat at the Liberian Senate, Abraham Darius Dillon (ADD), has slammed President Weah, labeling the Liberian leader as a “big kid that needs to mature.”
Dillon’s characterization of the president is in reaction to Weah’s recent assertions that instead of running for senator, Dillon, who is widely rumored to be a school drop-out, should go back to school.
On Friday, at the ruling party’s campaign launch of candidates for both senatorial and representative by-elections slated for next month, President Weah resorted to mudslinging of oppositions figures, stating that Dillon, a sturdy critic of the Liberian leader, who himself has in the past criticized him for being uneducated and was therefore unfit to lead, should be paid in his own coin, by relinquishing his senatorial ambition to go back to school.
“Tell Dillon to go back to school, let justice be done to all men; what was not allowed for me should not be allowed for Dillon,” Weah demanded.
Weah called Dillion a school dropout, also accusing the LP, UP, ANC and ALP senatorial candidate of stealing documents from the office of Rep Edwin Melvin Snowe, Jr., while ADD then worked in the office of now Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor when she served as Senator of Bong County.
According to President Weah, Dillon is ungrateful, recounting how he once sheltered ADD when he was being hunted to be killed by ex-president Charles Taylor, for allegedly being a part of a plot to assassinate Taylor.
The president also took jab at the leader of ALP and head of the collaborating opposition parties, Benoni Urey, who is the father of Telia Urey, the representative candidate for the ALP, UP ANC and LP in the upcoming by-election for Montserrado County electoral District-15.
“Benoni Urey is not associated with victory,” said Weah, who averred that the only thing he recalls about Urey, the father of Telia, who is a contender to the ruling parties candidate, Abu Kamara, in the Montserrado District-15 by-election, “is that when he wanted to leave from UN sanction list, he came to me and I helped him make his first foreign trip.”
Weah said: “This is a man that has never won anything, he supported his brother I defeated him, get ready tightened your belts, there is no way the Ureys can win election in Montserrado County because they are wicked people. We are cockroaches but they are killers, we are cockroaches, they are thieves.”
‘Dillon replies President Weah’
But in response to President Weah, in a video recording screamed live on Facebook on Saturday, Dillon said Weah’s comments were unrepresentative of a leader of a country.
“The only thing I can say is that President Weah is a big kid that needs to grow. At the age of 53, he still thinks and behaves like a kid,” said Dillon, who considers the president’s comments as being childish, reckless, and unsubstantiated lies.
Dillon, who believes the president’s campaign launch rants are personal and trivial, challenged Weah to desist traveling down such road and called on him and all other politicians and their supporters to rather discuss the issues that confront Liberians and Liberia.
Dillon bragged that in public service, while serving as a staffer at the Legislature, he scored several achievements far exceeding what Weah has ever done, challenging the president to make known his achievements when he served as Senator for Montserrado County.
“My public service record, you cannot match it,” said Dillon, adding, “Match your record as a Senator taking home almost $15,000 every month and match my record as a staff taking home less than $500 every month – see what I did; to improve people lives, to draft bills to submit them through a Senator my boss, and passed into law as a staff – what did you do as a Senator, George Manneh Weah?”
Dillon admitted to spending a night at President Weah’s Rehab Community residence, but was quick to remind Weah for failing to complete the story and embedding it with lies.
He said the portion of the story told by the president that he was being sought after and to be killed by Taylor because he was part of a plot being hatched at the time to have killed the former president, is a lie from the belly of the devil.
He narrated that the actual story which he said the president failed to have told his supporters is that at one point during Liberia’s war years while the president was at the time out of the country, when he (Dillon) and few persons including current Information Minister Lenn Eugene Nagbe, were fleeing Monrovia to Harbel, they passed a night at the president’s residence, and that following the war, as a sign of gratitude, he (Dillon) invited Weah at his house, fed him with food and served him liquor.
“We were fleeing from war Mr. Weah. I told you thank you, and in order for me to even show the humanity in me and for me to show a sense of gratitude, I invited you to my house after the war.”
“But Mr. Weah, you didn’t complete the story – I brought you to my house and I fed you, why didn’t you say so?” Quipped Dillon, who accused Weah’s followers at his (Dillon) residence at the time of Weah’s visit, of stealing his (Dillon) video camera.
“Why didn’t you complete the story today, that Darius Dillon called me to his house, and I ate his food and I drank his liquor, why you didn’t say it too?”
Dillon who equated the president’s rants to childishness added, “We cooked here for you, you ate for us to tell you thank you. Why you like to act childish? President Weah, why you like to act childish?”
He called on the president to desist from being childish, and refrain from always making public the help he has rendered others.
He said of the seven candidates in the race for the senatorial by-election, President Weah is attacking him because the Liberia leader is afraid of him, stating that his ascendancy to the House of Senate would witness a strong voice that would fearlessly speak against the president’s excesses, something he says has made the president to fear him.
In his reaction to President Weah’s description of him as a 9th Grader, Dillon threw out an open challenge to the president, calling on him (Weah) to sit with him (Dillon) on Liberia’s busiest street, Broad Street, where they will both write an application letter void of assistance from anyone, for both men to be later graded.
By talking about education in the manner Weah did against him, Dillon believes the president was only demonstrating that he (Weah) does not know what education is, saying, “because you are a complete uneducated fellow.”
“When it comes to academia, Mr. Weah, you can’t match the smallest nail on my smallest finger,” Dillon told the president, adding that education is the acquisition of skills that can be acquired formally and/or informally, for both of which he graded Weah with zero percent.
“Education is measured by the quality of a man’s output, not the mere acquisition of paper,” Dillon further told the president.
‘Urey may sue Weah’
For his part, ALP leader Urey has said he is weighing options available to him, whether or not to take the president to court to prove his “thief” and “killer” allegations made against him.
“I am viewing all legal options as this is a treat on my family and we don’t take it lightly. I view the President’s utterances as a threat on my family,” said Urey, who intimated that he would not verbally respond to the president through a hateful reply.
He denied that President Weah ever assisted him to be delisted from a United Nations travel and assets freeze ban, lifted by the UN Security Council on December 23, 2013, which were previous imposed on the businessman cum politician for what the UN deemed at the time as his existing tie with jailed former President Charles Taylor.
Urey termed Weah’s assertions as being regrettable, and wondering why would the Liberian leader stoop so low to such level.
“Now the Liberian people can see the gravity of the problems in our country. Today, my heart bleeds for Liberia. “God have mercy on Liberia,” FrontPage Africa quotes Urey as saying.
