Cash, T-Shirts and Gallons of Booze: How Liberian Candidates Woo Voters
In addition to funding the pen-pen drivers’ palaver hut — a sort-of community gathering area — Mr. Cooper
also gave them 2000 Liberian dollars (the equivalent of around $20) last month, the young men said.
In the streets of the capital, Monrovia, the young men call themselves "on loan." For a fee — cash, food, alcohol, a T-shirt — they will
appear at political rallies to swell up a crowd or simply show up on street corners to give the appearance of momentum for a candidate.
They hire local women and install them in party headquarters behind coal fires to cook countless bags of rice
and hearty Liberian-style stews — with potato greens, cassava leaf and palm butter — to feed their supporters.
That video simply joined a seemingly endless supply on Liberian social media of cash-for-votes videos, including one showing a woman wearing a "Charles Brumskine for President" T-shirt and a handbag around her neck and angrily announcing
that she had not been given the 500 Liberian dollars ($4.50) that she had been promised for showing up at a Brumskine rally.
8, 2017
MONROVIA, Liberia — For years, politicians have gamed the system during election season in Liberia, handing out food, money
and clothes with promises of future largess, only to disappear behind tinted S.U.V.
Almost every day for the past 10 months, a woman known as Mother Comfort Lloyd
and her 30 helpers have prepared rice, spicy peppery soup and potato greens to hand out to supporters at Mr. Weah’s headquarters in the Monrovia neighborhood called Fish Market.
When the legislative candidates show up in their big cars to hand out cash, he is there to receive his 250 Liberian dollars (around $2.25).