University of Liberia campus-based Student Unification Party (SUP) has urged Liberians to intensify the struggle for economic democracy and freedom.
The call was in observance of the Martyrs Day and Month 2024 in memory of all Progressive Martyrs.
Speaking to journalists at the Palm Grove Cemetery in Monrovia where the students had gone to lay flowers on the graves of fallen progressives on Sunday, April 14, 2024, Mustapha Kanneh said it was time Liberians rise to address the economic situation affecting them.
“We contend that the time has come to intensify the struggle for economic democracy and social justice, as political freedom without economic justice is nothing but a mockery of the masses,” he urged.
The Martyrs Day is in appreciation and celebration of the April 14, 1979 heroic uprising of the Liberian people for rice and rights; a revolutionary event that became a turning point of a new dawn in the political, economic and social history of Liberia.
He said after close to five decades of painstaking efforts, the gains of the progressive struggles for democratic change in Liberia have become irreversible.
According to the former SUP chairman, political democracy without economic democracy amounts to deceiving the people that they are participants in the democratic process when, in actual fact, they are not beneficiaries of the gains in the process.
“Thus, the progressive community welcomes, and urges the “Rescue” government to carry into effect, the people-centered content of the ARREST Agenda. It is in that spirit that we celebrate the progressive martyrs, bearing in mind that in the struggle for political freedom and economic justice in Liberia, the greatest price has been paid by the progressives,” Kanneh said.
He said as newer forms of struggles are taking shape, 2024 is a year in which the conservatives are getting into formation while the liberal opportunists are designing new plans of deception to cajole the suffering masses.
“We the progressives remain committed to the struggle for the political, economic, cultural, and social betterment of Liberia. We remain committed to the struggle for environmental protection and effective natural resource governance,” he said.
He urged Liberians to remain committed to the struggle for equality, social justice and fair play for all men and women under the rule of law.
He pledged commitment “to the promotion of Pan African solidarity. Basically, these sum up the ideological blueprint or plan of our struggle for national transformation and the redemption of our people from poverty, illiteracy, disease, marginalization, and mass suffering.”
Kanneh said the declaration of Progressive Martyrs Day by the leadership of the Liberian progressive community was not meant to be a mere anti-government activity.
He said it was intended to remember and appreciate progressive martyrs for their commendable contributions to democratic struggles and continually build a platform for educating, informing, directing, and guiding progressive struggles for democratic change in Liberia.
