On Saturday, January 28, I joined some of my colleagues as part of a program to raise awareness in Margibi about the ongoing voter registration process.

As young political leaders and campaign strategists, we were putting into practice the effective citizens’ engagements strategies we had learned while in school.

From ELWA Junction in Paynesville, we drove along the one-lane international highway leading to Roberts International Airport. Harbel was our first stop. The Margibi town also hosts the Firestone Rubber Company, Liberia’s biggest and oldest concession company, which has been operating in the country since 1926 but is yet to produce any finished rubber product.

As we drove through the plantation, we saw men carrying the latex they had tapped in two big buckets joined by a wooden stick on their shoulders. After 90 years in operation, the plantation had not found a better way to minimize labor and increase production.

The combination of seeing plantation workers engage in such grueling labor, combined with the knowledge that the plantation had yet to turn out any finished goods frustrated me and my colleagues.

Why hadn’t a government revised the concession agreement to offer more favorable conditions? “If I were president, this company would either produce the rubber here, or the rubber stays and they go instead,” I said to myself.

At the Harbel Market, our bus stopped as we split into teams of three persons and headed off to encourage people to register to vote.

While we did not encounter a hostile reaction from people, there was a general air of disenchantment about the process. Most people we talked to agreed that they would register, but few said they planned on voting in October.

“We are not going to make people and their families rich again while we continue to suffer” was the common refrain.

The reactions were surprising, to say the least, but we figured as long as they had the voter cards, nine months was sufficient to provide them with reasons to vote… probably.

Some of the responses we received were emblematic of a population that felt perpetually disappointed by what their government delivered.

We encountered a group of young people who complained about unemployment. A few asked how they could become employed like us while others asked that we give them some of the money we were earning. They sincerely doubted that we were volunteers.

“This government thinks Liberia is only Montserrado,” a young man stated. “We will register but we will not vote,” another said.

We repeated this exercise in Kakata and Weala, with similar results. Of the about 50 people we spoke to, 90 percent agreed to register but they all said they would not vote. They saw the voter registration card more as a way to obtain a valid identification, to use for purposes other than voting.

How do we convince an elderly woman or man to vote for change when in fact the person has voted in the last two or three elections and still does not see any? How do we convince a marketer who feels the hardship of business because of high prices and duties caused by insensitive government officials who raise taxes during a recession?

Many young people supported candidates within the legislature in past elections who promised to help with their education and provide empowerment opportunities for them. Most of them have not seen those very lawmakers since then.

Citizens are suffering! In a country with many resources, great lands for agricultural use, and only a population of four million, the fact that majority of the people cannot afford to live happily because of their low socio-economic status is ridiculous.

Geographically, Margibi is situated close to Montserrado, which is the home of the country’s political, economic and commercial capital. And yet, there are still many people here who are disenchanted with the government. How then, would people living much farther beyond Monrovia feel?

Yet, disenchantment and cynicism is not the way. If we must reverse this, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. We have to register to vote, and then actually vote, holding our leaders accountable for their actions. If we do not register to vote, the self-enriching politicians we are trying to get rid of will be reelected by their cohorts of supporters.

Featured photo courtesy of Zeze Ballah