By: Togba-Nah Tipoteh
The passing away of Senator Prince Yormie Johnson, the Celebration of the Tubman Holiday, and the 80th Birthday of President Joseph Nyumah Boakai are not a coincidence but are God-determined because God gives and God takes back what God has given us. It is through the Will of God that we celebrated the lives of all of these national leaders of Liberia over the past weekend. We celebrated their lives because of the Platonic relationship rather than the Satanic relationship that we have with them. God gives this example of a Platonic relationship to all of us, as seen in his giving his only Child to perform the ultimate sacrifice, dying to save us from our sins, to demonstrate the Love of God for all. Clearly, what is Platonic is good, but what is Satanic is bad.
Following the example of the Love of God, we can move forward for the better in all of our celebrations. Let us look at some examples. Your humble servant took an exam for a foreign scholarship to pursue undergraduate studies in the United States of America (USA). When the exam results were published, the name of your humble servant did not appear among the eight persons who passed the exam out of the 200-plus persons who took the exam. A colleague of my father, who worked at the City Bank in Monrovia, congratulated my father because he said that he served as one of the examiners and that he knew that I had passed the exam. But my father told him that my name was not published.
Let us look at an example of a Platonic relationship rather than a satanic relationship. When I found out about this injustice to me, I made my first protest by sitting on the sidewalk at the entrance to the Executive Mansion, where the late President Tubman worked and lived. His Wife, Mrs. Antoinette Tubman, saw me sitting on the sidewalk and asked me about my sitting there. I told her about the injustice faced by me. She told me to go home and return on the following day. I returned on the following day to find out that my name was placed on the list of the eight persons who passed the exam through the intervention of Mrs Tubman. The Secretary of Education had placed the name of his son on the list of eight and removed my name. No wonder the daughter of Mrs Tubman, Coocoo, walks around Liberia and abroad without boasting about the fact that her Father was President of Liberia. Coocoo walks and does not place any high things on her shoulders. Platonic Not Satanic!
Take the example of the late Husband of Coocoo Tubman, Mr. Gabriel Tucker. He attended high school at the Booker Washington Institute (BWI) in Kakata, Margibi County, Liberia. BWI remains a great unifying institution in Liberia because the Tuckers, the Coopers, the Kollies, and the Garswas went there for schooling. Now, a Woman. Dr. Nancy Freeman is the first female head of BWI. Soon to be transformed into an institution of higher learning. Unifying Not Dividing! What a great local and global example. How did this great example come about? It came about from the teaching of Liberian Elders, Grandparents and Parents. From the Elders, Grandparents and Parents, your humble servant learned honesty, justice, humility and hard work. So when my leg got broken playing football at the College of West Africa (CWA), I went to the Tennis Court at the Sports Commission on Broad Street, Monrovia to pick up tennis balls and give them to the players, who paid me some money that I used to help me go to school. So when people find out that I earned my PhD degree at 27 years of age, they should bear in mind that I finished school quickly because of the knowledge from the old people and from the academic and athletic scholarships I received and the hard jobs that I did. I retired as the undefeated Tennis Champion of Liberia from 1964 to 1994.
There is a meaningful Liberian expression that says: To sit on the new mat, you need to sit on the old mat. Through sitting on the old mat, this Commentary has come out to join the people who love Liberia, people who do the Platonic rather than the Satanic, to transform the Unfair prevailing electoral system into a Fair, enduring electoral system. It is only through this transformation, within the Rule of Law, that persons with good records can get elected to bring in the system of Justice, the indispensable ingredient for Peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country.
PLATONIC NOT SATANIC!
