Liberia’s former Vice President Joseph N. Boakai was recently admitted to hospital in the Monrovia area after suffering from undisclosed “dangerous illness”, source close to the hospital has confirmed. The news comes as voters security and confidence in the Unity Party (UP) and its leadership have been seriously affected by the flip-flopping of information on Boakai’s health and mental capacity to go the distance in the upcoming 2023 general election, especially against a younger candidate in George Weah.
Political analysts in the county have also attributed the massive decline in voters’ momentum, party vision and party youth capacity to push the frontline for Boakai’s platform to the consistence interference in the internal affairs of the part by dubious individuals who have lashed themselves to the lifeline of the party for their selfish political reasons. On Monday and Tuesday, disenchanted politicians and youths in Monrovia stormed local media offices to take to the airways to request the Unity Party be accountable to the Liberian people about the former Vice President mental and physical health.
Reputable News papers in the country also echoed this sentiment and hammered hard against the Unity Party (UP) weak and unreasonable talking point on the issue. According to a source close to the media ecosystem, “the media is simply delivering what the Liberian people feel” and they see the lack of accountability on Boakai’s seriously declining health, an insult and a dis-service to the voting base of the UP.
Newspapers in the Monrovia have started to carried headlines like “Come Clean On Joseph Boakai’s Health” (Front Page Africa) and “Come clean on Boakai’s health” (The New Down).
A source close to the Boakai campaign told Live Africa News that Boakai’s condition was “deeply worrying”. The former vice president, who served as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf right hand for 12 years, has previously been hospitalized for similar undisclosed “dangerous illness”. Investigative information revealed at the time that Boakai had a “serious, debilitating heart condition” that forced doctors to work on him.
Joseph N. Boakai, the frontrunner of the Unity Party (UP) went on to embarrassingly loose to George Weah in the 2017 general elections, and worse, he has continued to be in and out of the hospital for chronic pain and debilitating intestinal obstruction, etc. This 2023 campaign health interruption says a lot about the weakness of the Unity Party ticket and the real and present danger Boakai’s health fragility beings to the political life of the Liberian people.
