In this digital age, numbers rule the world. Our lives are driven by numbers: telephone numbers, pin codes for money transactions, ID numbers for passports, citizen identity cards, bank accounts, etc. The politics and elections have neither been spared. We were dazzled by seismic crowds with bloated estimates. We fussed over precinct codes, and lost sleep over vote counts and percentages.
By Obed Dolo, Contributing Writer
On many occasions, numbers determine the difference between life and death, like the emergency number 911, for example. However, man’s obsession with numbers far transcends the realm of science and practicality into the sphere of the spiritual. It is called numerology. Numerology (known prior to the 20th century as arithmancy) according to Wikipedia, is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events.
Sometimes the attraction to numbers is positive. Other times, it is dark and devious. In the secular world the number 13, is a dreaded number. It is believed to be so full of bad luck and ill-fortune that some architects will deliberately omit the 13th floor from a storey building. People will go to ridiculous lengths to avoid traveling or holding important events on the 13th day of the month.
To localize our content, many Liberians can relate to 14 as a number that readily connects to a famous person in our midst. It is no secret that President George Weah loves the number 14. During his international football career, in an arena in which there is a complicated politics involving who wears what numbers, he wore numbers like 9,10, 15, 31, 22, but he always gravitated towards his beloved number 14. In the national squad, Lone Star, he had no contender for his somewhat talismanic number 14. He iconized it and retired it. For now, it remains uninheritable and non-transmissible. I don’t know the genesis of his obsession with the number 14, the idolization of which seems to have left the soccer tuft. He has immortalized it with the establishment of the 14th Military Hospital. This 14 power will undoubtedly rise to the domain of legends in these hotly contested elections, if he wins the mantle of leadership for another six years on what may or may not be a well calibrated schedule for the runoff.
When the head of NEC seemingly disregarded the constitution(according to Cllr TS Gongloe) and scheduled the runoff for November 14th instead of 7th, the famous number imposed its presence on my psyche. I began to ponder over Madam Browne-Lassanah’s choice. Was the decision informed by logistical demands; needing more time to prepare for the run off? Or was it orchestrated to offer the football maestro his best shot on his lucky number? I don’t know. It may just be a frivolous coincidence.
It doesn’t stop there though. In this charged political season, the same thing can mean many things to many people. We have heard so many things, some tethering on the brink of the bizarre. The other day we watched a facebook live broadcast that suggested that a group of angry people adorned in what looked like CDC political paraphernalia, were heckling government ministers with whom they were disillusioned. Someone among the crowd shouted something that weirdly connected to the number 14, as told by an itinerant pastor.
“The Egyptians you see today , ye shall see them no more.” He said that is what Moses said to the fear-stricken Israelites in the Hebrew Torah (also recorded in the Christian Bible book of Exodus 14:13) just before they were delivered from the marauding army of Pharaoh at the Red Sea, following 430 years of slavery. The day Israel began their journey of freedom from Egypt was on the 14th day of the month of Nissan (Exodus 12). An imaginative correlation, perhaps. But in an era where a supposed prophet warns Liberians to vote a certain way, lest they perish, can you blame this other preacher? For him, it is a symbolism that holds a huge promise for those who want the current government changed.
He is convinced that on November 14, 2023, Liberia will be delivered from years of needless suffering. He pointed to the number 43 in Israel’s years of captivity, an allusion to the battle of 43% that left the country holding its breath and counting days to this 14 of antithetical expectations. Numbers! I believe the NEC boss will scratch her head to realize that symbolisms are magnets for thought projections of all kinds. Everyone will interpret it to his or her own advantage.
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