By Sidiki Fofana |Truth In Ink
Can or Should the CDC reclaim him? Truth in Ink presents the debate.
”Creatures” of the “Creek”, those political assets shaped by a movement, may become liabilities when they stray too far from the waters that nurtured them. But given time, purpose, and strategy, even they can return as assets once more. The creek has a way of calling its own back.
Such is the story of Thomas Fallah, the Deputy Speaker forged under the sycamore tree, whose absence now exposes the shortsightedness of those who once deemed him irrelevant. Their failure was not just political; it was the failure to recognize a proven winner.
In Liberia’s ever-turning wheel of politics, few figures better illustrate the cycle of rise, rupture, and redemption than Fallah. A grassroots mobilizer turned national lawmaker, he was for years a product and proud creation of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), a political institution that elevated him from obscurity to the national stage.
But today, Fallah stands expelled, labeled a “traitor,” a man whose decision to support the election of a Unity Party Speaker has earned him the mark of a liability. The narrative, however, is more complicated, and perhaps even more strategic, than that.
The Asset vs. Liability Argument
A respected colleague called me recently to challenge my classification of Fallah as an “asset.” He argued, quite logically, that in political warfare, an asset is one who adds value to the cause, while a liability subtracts from it. Fallah, in his view, crossed that line when he joined forces with the ruling establishment to tip the legislative balance.
He drew an analogy: “Owning a car is useful until you can no longer afford to fuel or maintain it. Then, it becomes a burden, what once empowered you now holds you back.” To him, Fallah was a car turned scrap metal.
But in politics, I told him , unlike in mechanics, value is not permanently lost. Assets depreciate, break down, and are often refurbished. And if there is one party in Liberia familiar with this cycle, it is the CDC.
From Asset to Liability, and Back Again To Capital: The CDC Case Studies
- Eugene Nagbe: From Founding Secretary to Rival Ally to Campaign Manager : Eugene Nagbe, CDC’s first Secretary-General, was a core architect of the party’s early message. Yet he defected to the Unity Party and became a trusted confidante of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. For many in the CDC, this was betrayal, a transformation from asset to liability. But history came full circle. Under President Weah, Nagbe returned, served as Minister of Information, and later led the CDC’s re-election campaign in 2023. Weah once called him “the most reliable hand in the storm.” (Source: Executive Mansion Archives, 2020)
- Henry Costa: A Voice Built by the CDC
Henry Costa is another fascinating case. Groomed by the CDC as a political advisor to its Standard Bearer, Costa’s rise was meteoric. He was an asset, until he became one of the fiercest critics of the CDC, mobilizing mass protests against the government. His transformation into a liability was not just personal but national.
Yet, there was a brief window in the 2023 electoral season when he returned as an asset again, indicating that even deep betrayals might be forgiven if strategic value is re-established. (Source: BBC Africa, 2020)
- Bill Twehway: The Betrayal and the Redemption
Bill Twehway, elected on the CDC ticket in 2005, could later marched hundreds of partisans to endorse Sirleaf during her controversial second term, an act considered treasonous by CDC loyalists. But Weah brought him back.
As head of the National Port Authority, Twehway became instrumental in CDC’s coastal political strategy, especially breaking new ground in Rivercess where the party had never won a legislative seat before. Here, too, the pattern is clear: liability one day, reclaimed asset the next.
- Samuel D. Tweah: The Technocrat Once Called Traitor
Even Finance Minister Samuel Tweah was once on the edge. His early critiques of Weah’s leadership style in his 2016 essay “The Way Forward for the CDC” angered the party’s base. Many called for his expulsion. But today, he’s hailed as a key architect of Weah’s economic policy and was instrumental in crafting the harmonization program still in use by the Boakai administration. (Source: Ministry of Finance & Development Planning Reports, 2019–2023)
In all these cases, the CDC recycled what it once rejected. It turned liabilities back into strategic assets.
Fallah Is Not the First, And Likely Won’t Be the Last
If the argument is that Fallah became a liability by working against a CDC Speaker, painful though that was, he still isn’t the first. Rufus Neuville, a CDC representative, once defied the party by supporting Edwin Snowe for Speaker. Years later, the CDC turned to Neuville to mobilize opposition against the Council of Patriots, then a leading threat to the Weah government.
The point isn’t to excuse Fallah’s political missteps. It is to ask: what do we do with what we built? We made Fallah. And like others before him, we are entitled to the return on our investment.
CDC now celebrates Yekeh Kolubah, a man who just two years ago was dismissed as a vulgar irritant, a “thorn in the flesh.” Today, some within the party hail him as a hero. If Yekeh can be reimagined, why can’t Fallah be forgiven?
A Manager’s Instinct: Reclaim What’s Yours
Everybody knows my support for J. Fonati Koffa, who despite current legal challenges, I believe still has a bright political future. But the manager in me, coupled with my political instinct, knows that reclaiming lost assets adds value to the fight ahead.
Fallah is one of those assets. Ignore the media spin and weaponized statements attributed to him. Worse has happened. Others have returned. He must be made to return to the Ludus, or sycamore tree the gladiator training ground, the same political environment that gave him tensity, agility, and presence. As Weah once said ” Let us return to the sycamore tree to resolve our disputes.”
And so I told say even in the fact of insults from unsophisticated sycophants masquerading as lolyists that “Creatures of the creeks belong in the creeks.” Just as a fish may survive for a moment outside water, it cannot live indefinitely. The creatures of the political creek, those shaped by the grassroots, may drift for a season, but they belong in the stream that gave them life.
Who’s Really to Blame?
The more pressing question is not whether Fallah betrayed CDC. It’s whether the CDC has a habit of turning its best assets into liabilities. The party has demonstrated little tolerance for internal dissent. Strong opinions, critical assessments, or alternative visions are often met with expulsion, not engagement.
As analyst Ibrahim Nyei observed, “Liberian political parties suffer not from lack of membership, but from lack of tolerance for dissent. That is where they cannibalize their own.” (Center for Democratic Governance, Policy Brief, 2019)
Fallah’s journey may have deviated, but was he pushed or did he jump?
The Fallah Question: Asset, Liability, or Reclaimable Capital?
So where does this leave Thomas Fallah? There is no question that the CDC invested heavily in his political rise, from youth leader to three-time lawmaker and now Deputy Speaker with speculation that he could become a potential candidate or running mate in the 2029 elections.
By any definition of institutional human capital, Fallah was an asset. But his decision to break party ranks in support of the Unity Party’s Speaker, and his public endorsement of President Boakai as well as his muted opposition to the Boakai government, turned him into a liability in the eyes of many partisans.
But can that be reversed?
If history is any guide, yes. The CDC has a pattern of eating its own when loyalty is questioned but later calling them back when political expediency demands it.
The deeper issue, however, may lie in the CDC’s own structural rigidity. Critics have often argued that the party struggles with internal dissent. As political analyst Ibrahim Al-Bakri Nyei noted in 2019, “Liberian political parties, including the CDC, lack internal democratic mechanisms, and often conflate loyalty with silence.” (Source: Center for Democratic Governance, Policy Brief, 2019)
Fallah’s dissent, however controversial, may not be worse than that of others who returned. The CDC’s challenge now is not merely deciding whether Fallah is trustworthy, it is whether the party can evolve into a political institution that manages disagreement without throwing away its long-term assets.
Conclusion: Redemption Is a Political Strategy
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes: “A general who knows when to retreat also knows when to return.” Fallah was once a general in CDC’s frontline. His departure may have hurt, but it need not be permanent.
The question isn’t whether he was a liability. The evidence speaks for itself. The question is whether he can be an asset again. And if history is any guide, the answer is simple: yes.
