Published: August 5, 2026
MONROVIA — The party that made George Weah president is weaker now than at any point in its two decades, according to residents and supporters in central Monrovia who say the Congress for Democratic Change has stopped speaking, stopped marching and stopped appearing in the communities that carried it to power.
The Liberian Investigator interviewed residents and partisans in Monrovia this week. Their views are not a survey and do not represent national opinion, but none of them described a party functioning as an opposition.
By Alphanso G. Kalama and Masefane Konneh
Hawa Kaba, a used clothes seller in central Monrovia, put it plainest.
“You don’t have to be in power to make a change, but we can’t see them since they lost power,” she said. She said she does not expect the party to return to power.
Abraham Konneh, a resident of Montserrado District 16, said the silence is the point.
“CDC is not like before. It’s like there’s no opposition, nobody is talking, nobody is doing anything to hold the government’s feet to the fire, so it’s a serious weakness from their end,” he said.
Alfred Kollie, who spoke at the Good Guys Intellectual Fellowship Center, said what he sees is not quiet but division.
“The CDC in 2005 is not the CDC I’m seeing now because I see a crack, I see a break out, I see a disjointed team,” he said.
Joseph Myres traced the weakness to the top, saying the party’s two most senior officers are not functioning in their posts and that what holds it together is Weah’s personal popularity rather than any structure.
“The two people in question are not active in positions, so it leaves the party weak,” he said.
Fear, not indifference
Alfred K. G. Junior, a CDC supporter and businessman, said the streets are empty for a reason his party will not say out loud. Partisans are not satisfied. They are afraid.
“The reason you will see the CDC not being strong in opposition like before is because of the current government’s move towards the opposition. They don’t see the opposition as a human or competitor; instead, they treat them like animals. So for that reason, you will not find the CDC demonstrating like before,” he said.
Junior said he was on the receiving end of state force under the Sirleaf administration in 2011 and will not risk it a second time.
“I’m a victim from the Ellen administration in 2011, so I can’t even try it now,” he said.
Not everyone reads the quiet as collapse. Joe Pattern said the party is holding back on purpose and will look different when the campaign starts.
“We’ve only gone two years out of six years, so maybe the party needs to give the ruling establishment more chance to prove the lies they told the Liberians that brought them to power,” he said.
What sits behind the impression
Myres’s complaint about absent officers has a documentary basis. Secretary General Jefferson T. Koijee, sanctioned by the United States in 2023 and long the party’s most visible organizer, has been speaking from exile. Janga A. Kowo took the chairmanship in an acting capacity in March 2024 and continues to sign the party’s statements.
The party has also been losing people. Deputy Speaker Thomas P. Fallah was expelled in December 2024 over his role in removing Speaker Fonati Koffa, a CDC man. Montserrado Senator Saah H. Joseph resigned in August 2025 after nearly 20 years and announced the formation of his own party. In February 2026, the CDC expelled Senator Zoe E. Pennue, Cllr. Kanio Bai Gbala and Sinoe District 2 Representative Samson Weah, accusing them of eighteen months of collaboration with the Unity Party.
Kowo has conceded the weight of at least one of those exits, telling partisans after Joseph’s resignation that the party could not sit and pretend the departure meant nothing.
The party says it is talking
The leadership rejects the charge of silence. The CDC warned on July 20 of a constitutional crisis over efforts to overturn former Finance Minister Samuel Tweah’s acquittal, and on July 26 Kowo issued an Independence Day statement accusing the Boakai administration of democratic backsliding, calling for an independent investigation into alleged international drug cartel activity and questioning the reinstatement of dismissed senior police officers under Inspector General Gregory Coleman.
Whether that is opposition is disputed inside the party. Fallah said on radio in April that the CDC had been hijacked and could not win in 2029. Koijee answered that the party remains rooted in popular support and accused Fallah of drifting toward the Boakai administration.
The street belongs to someone else
The demonstration that filled central Monrovia this year was not the CDC’s. It was called on July 17 by STAND, led by Mulbah K. Morlu, who chaired the CDC until 2024, and it demanded action on the Roberts International Airport cocaine case. Morlu is now before the courts over a firearm displayed at that protest.
Weah, who lost the 2023 runoff to Joseph Boakai by 50.7% to 49.3%, has said he intends to run again in 2029 and wants the party reconciled first.
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