Published: September 9, 2026
MONROVIA — The organizers who delivered President Joseph Nyuma Boakai the presidency in 2023 are now saying publicly that the Unity Party has no use for them, and the latest to say it is threatening to walk.
By Masefane Konneh
Mac Khailelu Jabateh, a former assistant minister, has given the governing party what he calls his last warning over a government position left unresolved by the executive branch’s restructuring. “My problem should be solved. If it can’t be solved, I’ll say to hell with the Unity Party. Yes, I’ll do that,” he said.
Jabateh has been associated with the post of assistant minister for peacebuilding, and moved from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Local Government when the executive was reorganized. The new statutory structure at Local Government carries no such position, leaving his formal status unsettled.
He frames the dispute as one of recognition rather than title. “Some of those people that make those decisions at the local government, where were they? The disrespect that I received! They were nowhere!” he said. “We make sure President Boakai took power here. We did it! And you can attest to it.”
He also drew a line between organizers and the party’s online defenders. “Do you know when I’m leaving the Unity Party there will be a big blow to the party?” he said. “Not some of those puppets that is on social media cussing people in comments around here, those ones who can’t even convince a single village.”
A complaint that keeps recurring
The grievance is not his alone, and the pattern in each case is the same: criticism aimed at the party while support for Boakai personally is preserved.
Former Bomi County Sen. Sando Dazoe Johnson accused the Unity Party in August 2025 of ingratitude toward the allies who returned it to power, exempting Boakai and faulting those around him. He later said he would not support the party in 2029 while maintaining his backing for the president. In May he described the circle around Boakai as making the party unpopular, and accused some officials of putting their own ambitions ahead of the president’s reelection. Johnson has consistently presented himself as a grassroots mobilizer who worked to unseat the Coalition for Democratic Change.
Gbarpolu County Sen. Amara Konneh has raised his own concerns about isolation and marginalization within the government despite his role in the 2023 coalition, pointing to internal competition and shifting centers of influence around the presidency.
The expulsion of former Montserrado County District 10 Rep. Yekeh Kolubah from the House of Representatives in April sits at the edge of the same conversation. Kolubah backed Boakai in 2023 without joining the Unity Party, and was removed over comments about Liberia’s territorial integrity, in a vote taken despite a Supreme Court stay order whose service later became the subject of judicial proceedings. His case is a disciplinary matter rather than an employment dispute, but it has fed the same argument about how the governing establishment treats people who helped it win without belonging to it.
Coalition arithmetic
Boakai’s 2023 victory rested on a bloc wider than the Unity Party’s own base, drawing in politicians, former officials, community mobilizers and opposition figures with constituencies of their own. Many joined to defeat then-President George Weah rather than out of party loyalty, and the appointments, access and recognition that followed have not matched what they believe they were owed.
That is the political problem underneath Jabateh’s file. A restructuring can lawfully abolish a position, redraw responsibilities and change the statutory basis on which an official serves. A supporter who believes he earned his appointment through years of political work reads the same act as a dismissal.
Both available responses carry a cost. Leaving the complaint unresolved confirms the impression among other disaffected allies that the party stopped listening once it won. Resolving it invites the question of whether appointments are being made to meet institutional requirements or political debts.
Before 2029
Jabateh has not left. He has set a condition, and the condition is personal. What makes it worth attention is that Johnson has already met the same grievance with a decision, declaring he will not back the party in 2029, and that the complaints are now being made on the record rather than privately.
Neither the Unity Party nor the Ministry of Local Government has responded to Jabateh’s warning or to the wider criticism.
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