Taylor Made

is a Fulbright scholar in West Africa. Election Day finds Sekou Conneh, the leader of the rebel group that drove dictator Charles Taylor into exile, refreshed from an afternoon nap, confident that Liberia's first election after 14 years of civil war would pass without incident. At his compound on the outskirts of town, the former leader of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (lurd) is in high spirits, despite the fact that he has no chance of finishing among the top presidential vote-getters. "This is a great day for Liberia," says Conneh, as his posse of former rebels--some sporting aviator sunglasses despite standing in an unlit room--nod in unison. "This is a great day for democracy," continues the man whose army's march on Monrovia rivaled in brutality Taylor's own barbarous tactics during the civil war.But, when the conversation turns to Taylor himself, Conneh's ode to Liberian democracy ends as abruptly as many of Liberia's roads. "There are some people who have worked with Taylor since 14 years [ago] and they are not going to change," he says. "They are his friends, and he gave them jobs. He built them up. And most of them are not going to change, so, yeah, Taylor is fully represented in this country. I know that. I fear that." Taylor was the proverbial elephant in the room leading up to Liberia's October 11 presidential and congressional elections: Although barred from interfering in Liberian politics under the conditions of his asylum, there is plenty of evidence that Taylor has continued to meddle from his luxurious exile in Calabar, Nigeria. Leading presidential candidates were mostly mum about Taylor during the recent campaign, lest they alienate the roughly one-third of the population still thought to support the former dictator. Now that nearly all the votes have been counted, Taylor's allies seem to have done surprisingly well in the House and Senate. (The presidency will be decided in a run-off election on November 8.) These Taylor loyalists may soon have the opportunity to determine the fate of their former benefactor. And that means that the biggest winner of Liberia's latest stab at democracy may be the man who did the most to destroy the last one. Ravaged by war and looted by its leaders, Liberia is a country with no public electricity or water, where squatters occupy government ministries and children play in heaps of trash left uncollected on the street. The political challenges facing its government are formidable, too, especially given the fact that few of those winning legislative seats in the election come to power with clean hands. For example, in the soft hills of Nimba County, where Taylor began Liberia's civil war on Christmas Eve 1989, Adolphus Dolo (alias: "General Peanut Butter") and Prince Johnson have won Senate seats. A notorious Taylor henchman, Dolo gained a reputation as the only pro-government commander to fend off the feared attacks of Conneh's lurd army. Johnson began the war a Taylor ally but fell out on the road to Monrovia and is now a bitter enemy. He achieved notoriety by ordering his men to bring him the severed ears of then- President Samuel Doe. (They videotaped Doe pleading in vain for his life.) Taylor's exile will be one of the first items facing this new government when it assembles in January under the mindful gaze of the 15,000 U.N. troops who constitute the second-largest peacekeeping mission in the world. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo is under international pressure to turn Taylor over to the U.N.-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, where he is charged with 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Obasanjo has said he will only do so if the democratically elected government of Liberia consents. "Obasanjo will pass the buck to the new president of Liberia. The president will pass the buck to the House and Senate, and either the legislature will decide or it will pass the buck to the people, in a referendum," says Jasper Cummeh, the head of a campaign finance monitoring organization in Monrovia. "The first thing for Taylor is not to manipulate the presidency, but to try to manipulate the House, and he will also have some voice in the Senate." No one doubts that Taylor violated the terms of his exile by meddling in the Liberian elections, but no one knows, precisely, to what extent. Absent a reliable campaign finance reporting system, tracing Taylor's campaign contributions is nearly impossible. Of the 762 campaigns, only 116 had filed reports two weeks after the deadline. Former President Jimmy Carter, one of 400 international monitors, tells me, "Charles Taylor has lots of people running for office. There's no doubt about that. He'd like to control the government." As the ballots made their way to election headquarters in Monrovia last week, some by helicopter and others along Liberia's medieval roads, it became clear that Taylor allies had had a good day. While the National Patriotic Party (NPP), Taylor's old political machine, has not managed an overwhelming success, several close friends of the former dictator have assumed new, if temporary, party identities. They seem to have the best of both worlds: the quiet support of the old NPP guard and a clean bill of health from their new parties of choice. Enough erstwhile NPP loyalists have publicly embraced new parties to suggest a fifth-column strategy. Even the NPP secretary-general ran as an independent. At least Taylor's wife, who did not accompany him into exile, ran on the official NPP ticket. She won a resounding victory. According to several Liberian political analysts, no fewer than eight of Taylor's close associates, including his wife, will serve in the 30-seat Senate- -more than enough to play defense on war-crimes legislation and perhaps enough to grease the path for his return. With a potential plurality in the Senate, Taylor also appears to be making a play for outright control of the House, where his former son-in-law, Edwin Snowe, is up for the speakership. A 35-year-old former truck driver, Snowe married and then divorced Taylor's daughter. Shortly before he left for Nigeria in 2003, Taylor promoted Snowe to managing director of the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company. Snowe became one of the richest men in Liberia during the two-year transitional government that has been defined by excessive corruption, even by West African standards. Local journalists following his congressional campaign, which ended in a clear victory, said Snowe spent more than most presidential aspirants. "He is going to buy the speakership," says Tom Kmara, editor of the respected New Democrat newspaper. Upstairs in his beachside compound outside Monrovia, behind tinted windows that soften the afternoon sun, Snowe dismisses any suggestion that he is his former father-in-law's stooge. Earlier this year, in fact, Taylor tried to have him killed, Snowe claims. "But the investigation came out that it was not true and that I fabricated that," says Snowe. Of course, he has a ready explanation for this, too: "I was investigated by Mr. Taylor's ex-brother-in-law," he chuckles. "So his ex-son-in-law was investigated by his ex-brother-in-law." On the day after the election, Snowe is confident. His decision to leave Taylor's old party, where he was once the youth chairman, and run as an independent appears to have been the right one. It will give him the flexibility to broker a deal with many of the nearly 20 parties and independent representatives in the House, he says, vaulting him to the speaker's chair. But Snowe's supposed independence appears as thin as his allegations of the Taylor- sponsored assassination attempt. One week before polling day, Snowe reportedly announced that, despite his independent candidacy, he had rejoined the NPP, a move designed to drive up his margin of victory. (Snowe later denied that this was the case, although the original NPP candidate dutifully stepped aside.) "It's all part of Taylor's game, part of the diversion," says James G. Kaizolu, editor of the Liberian Express newspaper and a former president of the press association. "They are all still NPP." So what are Snowe's intentions regarding Taylor and the Special Court for Sierra Leone? "I am not going to lie about it. I am not going to kid you. I don't wish evil on Mr. Taylor," he says. "If the law dictates that, so be it. But I am not going to go after Mr. Taylor to hunt him down. No." That's a remarkably charitable attitude toward a man whom you believe tried to have you killed. But then again, Taylor has tried to kill many Liberians. And, given the legislative results, one gets the sense that Taylor slept easier than most Liberian politicians on Election Day.

By hans nichols