PYJ

Liberian Senator Prince Y. Johnson, presidential candidate for the National Union for Democratic Progress.
Photo courtesy Mae Azango.

PYJ stands for Prince Y. Johnson, the former warlord implicated in thousands of deaths during the Liberian civil war. It also stands for Johnson's presidential campaign slogan -- People Yearning for Justice. We drive to his burgundy and cream-colored compound near Duport Road. Inside the gates there are bronze statues of lions with blood-red tongues and an assortment of farm animals -- sheep, goats, chickens, even a cow. All 12 of his children live with him.

One of the men who would be king presided over rebel forces as they sliced off the ears of Samuel Doe in September 1990.

After Doe's torture and killing, an article in The New York Times described Johnson as "a foe to be feared."

Doe's uprising was and the awful years of war that ensued ostensibly about challenging a system that favored a Liberian Congo elite built on the backs of poor indigenous Country people. The president's main opposition is Winston Tuban, the nephew of the much-loathed President Tubman whose successor William Tolbert was overthrown in the coup. Twenty years later, I asked Johnson whether the civil war achieved anything.

"The war? Well, the war destroyed lives and properties. The only accomplishment it brought was to conscientize people that we should never do anything that would bring war again. That's the only lesson. Because we tried Doe for rampant corruption, we charged Doe for many, many things. The same things Tolbert was charged with nepotism is the same thing Ellen is doing. Her entire family, they're in government, in high positions.  Some of them, they are prime minister under disguise. Like Robert Sirleaf. Now, that's the only lesson that the war taught: it taught us the lesson to never return to those old systems that brought the war. We don't want to see it. That's why we're talking now. Because Ellen was in the vanguard of the advocacy. Strong advocacy! Rampant corruption! Dictatorship! She went to jail many times preaching against dictatorship. That was good; she did well. Now she's the president. What is she doing now?"