Cash, T-Shirts and Gallons of Booze: How Liberian Candidates Woo Voters<br />In addition to funding the pen-pen drivers’ palaver hut — a sort-of community gathering area — Mr. Cooper<br />also gave them 2000 Liberian dollars (the equivalent of around $20) last month, the young men said.<br />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<br />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.<br />They hire local women and install them in party headquarters behind coal fires to cook countless bags of rice<br />and hearty Liberian-style stews — with potato greens, cassava leaf and palm butter — to feed their supporters.<br />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<br />that she had not been given the 500 Liberian dollars ($4.50) that she had been promised for showing up at a Brumskine rally.<br />8, 2017<br />MONROVIA, Liberia — For years, politicians have gamed the system during election season in Liberia, handing out food, money<br />and clothes with promises of future largess, only to disappear behind tinted S.U.V.<br />Almost every day for the past 10 months, a woman known as Mother Comfort Lloyd<br />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.<br />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).
