THE COUNTRY LIBERIA

The Republic of Liberia is a country on the west coast of Africa. It is bordered to its west by the Republic of Sierra Leone, east by the Republic of Ivory Coast (La Cote D’Ivoire), north by the Republic of Guinea, and South by the Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of approximately 5.058 million people, and it covers an area of 43,000 sq. miles (111,369 sq. kilometers).

English is the official language, but there are more than 20 indigenous languages. The country’s capital Monrovia was named after President James Monroe, the 5th President of the United States, whose administration greatly aided the program for the descendants of Africans to return to Africa, after their victory over slavery in the United States of America.
Liberia is one of the only countries in Africa that thwarted attempted colonization (the American Colonization Society, ACS) in the early nineteenth century and proclaimed its independence on the 26th day of July 1847 A.D.

Liberia was established as a country on Christian principles for freedom, equality, humanity, self-determination, and justice for all. Liberia started with a democratic form of government. Initially, there was a political party known as the Republican Party of Liberia from 1847. Representative government of the people was in place. Representatives were elected for two-year terms senators were elected for a four-year term of service and the president was elected for a two-year term of office. By 1895 (1907), the term of service for representatives changed from two to a four-year term, while the term of service for senators changed from four to a six-year term of service.

The four to six-year term of service for both houses of the Liberian National Legislature existed up to the political intervention of the Liberian Military in April of 1980, the fall of the old republic. Today, the term of service of the House of Representatives is six (6) years, the term of service in the Liberian Senate is nine (9) years and the term of the presidency of Liberia is six (6) years.
Democratically by the 1870s, Liberia had two political parties. The parties were the Republican Party of Liberia headed by President Joseph Jenkins Roberts and the True Whig Party of Liberia headed by President Edward James Roye (the first most popular president in the history of Liberia). As the fear of the loss of power and influence grip<! –more–>the leaders and members of the Republican Party due to President Roye’s popularity and his democratic style of leadership, the stewards of the Republican Party, plotted against President Roye and sentenced him to death by assassination.

After the assassination of President Roye in the year 1871, the power of the Republican Party of Liberia manipulated the entire political system thereby putting the country’s constitution to death automatically and took over President Roye’s True Whig Party (TWP) and declared Liberia as a one-party state under the disguise that “there should be no division amongst us.” As such, Liberia experienced the dictatorship of the stolen party for over a century and nine years up to April 1980.

From time immemorial, the unquenchable quest of the Liberian Nation is liberty, human equality, self-determination, democracy, and justice for all. This quest is imbued in the organic law of the land and it is inescapable. However, due to the unfolding historical circumstances and the devastation of the recent civil war from 1989 – to 2005, Liberia as a nation has fallen behind a hundred years to reach its expected developing country level of a twenty-first-century country. As citizens, descendants, and friends of Liberia, all our efforts are needed to raise the flag of Liberia among the comity of nations.