Politics of the Belly

In a failed state on the West African coast, fallow fields and an oligopolic import market mean many are going hungry. In this year's elections, rice is used as a political tool.

In Liberia, devastated after 14 years of a senseless civil war, talk is cheap. Any aspiring politician this election years knows he needs rice – and lots of it – if he wants a crowd at his stump.

The impoverished masses of this country, founded on the West African coast 150 years ago by freed slaves from America, view campaign season as a boon time. This is politics in the Tammany tradition. And though a voter may think twice about selling his vote, at least there is no question as to what the currency will be. “A Liberian man may put food in his mouth all day,” says Vincent Klede, for three years a driver for Firestone, which maintains the world's largest rubber plantation outside the capital Monrovia. “But if he hasn’t eaten rice, he’ll say he hasn’t eaten.”

In a country so broken it can't even offer the statistics that show its neighbors have the lowest quality of life on earth, the staple food is a vivid image to the hungry. Liberians date the beginning of their political awakening to the rice riots of 1979, when frustration over rising prices and the one-party state brought the public to the streets. Monrovians associate the worst periods of their many years of conflict with the concomitant spike in the price of a cup of rice. Chea Cheapoo, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, opened his unsuccessful senatorial bid in River Gee County in September by explaining his reasons for retiring from the bench: “That judiciary is so rotten,” he told a dancing, drumming crowd in one of the least developed regions of the countryside. “They bribe just like how you cook rice every day.” And while only one warlord, Sekou Conneh, was among the 22 candidates in the political free-for-all that was the first round of the race for the presidency, his estranged wife over the border in Guinea is an eerie reminder of darker forces in the wings. The International Crisis Group, which monitors West Africa closely, reports Aisha Keita Conneh is luring throngs of former fighters to her home by cooking 100 50-kg bags of rice every week.

In the country’s last experiment with democracy, citizens overwhelmingly elected the country’s leading warlord to the presidency. Six years after the 1997 elections, Charles Taylor, alienated by the international community and with two rebel movements at the gates of Monrovia, fled into exile. He had been elected by turning his fighting forces into a well oiled political machine, with feasts of grand proportions at the precinct and district level. Many see their choice then as a mistake, but would only be so happy to live through his campaign once more.


The Liberian officials and international experts overseeing this year’s election have devoted much hand-wringing to its needless concurrence with the rainy season. Less attention has been given to the anachronistic constitution’s placement of campaigns during the hungry season, when hampers have run dry and children grow thin. In these months, the cost of feeding a family on imports from China and Pakistan, 80 percent of which are controlled by two Lebanese businessmen, can soar as high as $40, more than the monthly salary of many civil servants. Families grouse by on cassava or the much-maligned bulgur wheat, imported from the American heartland.

The campaign feeding frenzy has mellowed since October 11, when the first round of voting decided the races for the Senate and House. The two candidates in the second round - required because none received an outright majority of votes in the first - don't want their heightened profile to get them in trouble with the country's oft ignored campaign finance regulations, which outlaw vote buying.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank official and chair of the Special Executive Rice Committee, has been part of the political landscape since the final days of the True Whig Party in the 1970s. But with her advanced Harvard degree and years abroad, she is far from the Liberian mainstream. Her runoff competitor is George Manneh Weah, the 1995 world soccer play of the year. He can’t boast a high school diploma, but his supporters say he’s too rich to be corrupted.

It's a stark choice for voters, but both candidates claim to offer the one thing Liberians want other than rice. A way out of the senseless war that has ravaged the country. Round two takes place on November 8.

By: Jeff Austin contributing writer to PurePolitics.com