Nathaniel Varney Massaquoi: 1945-53 - The Reformer
Few politicians in Liberian history have been as privileged as the second Massaquoi President. Born in 1905 to a father who was both King of the Galinas and President of Liberia, he seemed to live a charmed life. Nathaniel was 19 when the Slave's War tore apart the Galinas people and was in Europe at the time, being educated. He returned to Africa only to teach in Freetown in 1926 and thus also missed the Occupation. When he did return to Liberia, to take over from his ailing Father, he immediately became the standard bearer for the Islamic wing of the True Whigs and made a serious run for the leadership in 1936 leading to him being appointed Secretary of State in Kaba's cabinet. This meant he was in charge of foreign affairs during World War II and so became the poster boy for Liberia's alliance with the Allies and the obvious choice to take over in 1945, where he faced the electorate with the country doing as well as it had ever done. The export economy was booming, government income was high and government debt was low (a deal was eventually made to pay back something to France but the crippling debts of the pre war period were a thing of the past).
The 1945 election saw Massaquoi largely run on the records of his predecessors and against Clarence Gray's bold economic plan to liberalise by privatising the industrial sector and he won comfortably. The Socialists, while still only a spoiler party rather than one which could challenge for the Presidency, however had a good election running largely against the feudal control of local chiefs and making much of the fact that both the other Presidential candidates were from the aristocracy, who dominated the political scene thanks to having better educations and a strong position in the various secret societies. It was the socialists who first began to genuinely challenge the feudal chiefs for their congress seats by organising the former domestic slaves and mine workers.
This challenge was the main reason why Massaquoi felt that root and brunch constitutional reform was needed. The original Written Constitution of Liberia, had included the line that the citizens of Liberia were all former Residents of the USA and so had been removed by Bylden when he extended the Franchise to a lot of people who weren't. But nothing had really replaced it, thanks to the True Whig concept of Liberia being a patchwork of different legal jurisdictions under a single President. Liberia was a country obsessed with the law, it had more lawyers per person than anywhere in the world, but that was largely because Liberian Law was complicated and every interaction between people from different ethnicities was a minefield. Massaqoui felt things needed to be simplified and consolidated.
The 1947 constitution was stunningly radical in some ways and surprisingly conservative in others. Massaquoi took the starting point that the Chiefs needed to be reformed or they would be overthrown. And that primarily meant democratising them. Liberia had already been divided into 30 districts for electoral purposes and Massaquoi took the position that each of these districts, including Monrovia which had only limited self government under the current set up, should have the full rights of being able to set their own laws, taxes and services but their leader must be chosen by a general election within that district. The Multicultural nature of Liberia meant that the districts often included multiple ethnicities with multiple law codes and so this would remove the least significant interior leaders from the equation by annexing their lands into the more powerful native Kingdoms but in return those positions would be removed from the blood lines. Those leaders would be given the honoury title of King, though many such as the Mayor of Monrovia choose not to use it, and would rule for life and have full power to alter laws within their district but could be challenged at any point if a thousand signatures could be found within the district, thus forcing another election. This way it was hoped that the King could be held accountable though if they won the challenge it meant they couldn't be challenged again for another four years, a compromise forced upon Massaquoi by the more conservative wing.
However to balance this, he also increased the Power of the Presidency. It was Massaquoi's opinion that the Slave's War had happened because there was no peaceful way for the President to amend laws in the interior. Those interior leaders had been viewed by Blyden as rulers of the perfect society and so his attempts to bring them into the democratic system had been focused on allowing them to effect Monrovian laws through their votes and congress members rather than vice versa. Garvey, the democratically elected President, had had no peaceful mechanism for changing laws in Galinas and the other interior Kingdoms. Massaquoi's new constitution would give the President the right to introduce universal laws, such as Garvey's emancipation order, but it would need the support of a Majority of the, now elected, Kings to pass. He included the existing universal laws as a bill of rights which prohibited slavery, murder and rape from being legalised, enshrined full suffrage and enforced the right for trial by jury, the freedom to join a trade union and the legality of being able to publish critical leaflets among others. This bill could only be amended or added to by the President with the consent of both the Kings' Council and the Senate. The President would also be given the sole ability to declare war or take out loans, both of which they could do without the approval of the Senate.
The Senate, not the Congress. Since Roye had changed the terms of everyone from two years to four, the Senate, House and President had all been elected at the same time, meaning that the party which won one of the parliaments almost always won the other one too. The President, being elected by popular vote rather than geographic vote, could find himself at cross purposes to Congress but Congress always agreed with in itself which begged the question as to why there were two houses at all. Massaquoi's constitution would see the House of Representatives replaced by the Kings' Council with only the 60 Senators continuing their traditional role. But, knowing that 'half of you will lose your jobs' was a hard sell, he mandated in the Bill of Rights, that each District would have a 11 man House of Representatives which would be able to amend and block the King's laws and would be elected every national election, thus actually much increasing the number of politicians, though the district Houses, in practice, often became a retirement house for old politicians. The constitution would also end 'double jobbing', which had been rampant between the house and the senate, and solved the problem of the President needing to have a congress seat, by simply reserving two extra seats for the President and the Leader of the opposition so no loyal congressman had to stand down to allow the President to address the Senate.
There were three more major elements of the constitution. Citizenship, Expansion and Budget. Citizenship in Liberia prior to the 1947 constitution was automatic for anyone moving to the country as long as they were black or coloured with whites and asians banned from ever gaining citizenship. The Patriotic Union had argued for a more sophisticated citizenship process, both to slow down the steady trickle of African-American immigrants which the PU tended to distrust and to give a route for citizenship for the existing Lebanese minority in Monrovia. Massaquoi's Constitution however would not only keep the existing Citizenship system exactly as it was and make it a universal law, which the Kings had no control over, but would explicitly call the country a Black ethnic state, which any black person would be welcome in. This move towards embracing Pan-Africanism as a state philosophy was at the core of the constitution.
To that end the constitution also made it clear that any African state could, if they voted for it in a referendum, join Liberia as a district with the same rights and responsibilities as any other district and neither the senate nor the Kings' Council could block this if the President approved it. The Post War era came with it an increased demand for independence among the African Empires and Massaquoi, who had family living in Sierra Leone, was newly hopeful that the grand old dream of an Africa united under Liberian rule could at last come true, regularly inviting independence activists in neighbouring countries to Monrovia.
Lastly there was the Budget. Now that the government was making money from mining and plantations within districts that it had given some sort of self rule to, the question was how should that be dealt with. For a start, to prevent a PU King from simply selling government owned industries, one of the universal laws was that government industry could only be sold by the President and only then after a district wide referendum. Moreover, having essentially given away any taxation powers to the Kings, meaning the hated hut tax Monrovia had long collected could now be removed by the Kings' themselves, the poison pill within that gift was that the President maintained all the profits from the national industries. This both funded his government and what Massaqoui called the people's fund, which the President could use to fund any infrastructure project in any of the districts which was for communal use, that is any citizen could use it, whether that was roads, schools, hospitals, soup kitchens or housing. This was, by design, a system that led to pork barrel politics and helped perpetuate regional inequality, it was not a coincidence that the first projects funded by it were Monrovian sanitation and electrical systems that cemented the popularity of Monrovia's True Whig Mayor. However, by making this linked to the national industries, it also made it very difficult for any future PU president to privatise them.
The Constitution was overwhelming in its ambition and yet it had many noted omissions. With no country wide currency in Liberia for generations and foreign currency or barter largely used instead, Massaquoi had neglected to mention anything about the right to print currency. Likewise, with the US army providing the main security force, there was no detail on how an army would be funded or ordered in case of war. That was left to the districts to organise. As well as that, the emergence of the socialists hadn't prevented government thinking still being based around a two party system, the vote counting system to prevent fraud was still bi partisan meaning in districts where the socialists did well, vote counting was still done by a representative of the two biggest national parties and the socialists often accused of them cooperating to shut them out. Land tenure for farming was also left entirely to the districts despite it being an increasingly contentious issue and the way the True Whig's economic theory had always made much of communally owned land and property, the idea that land should belong to everyone. And there was no term limit placed on the President.
The Constitution was fiercely opposed by the opposition, with the PU leader, and ex True Whig, Plenyolo Gbe Wolo, making much of the dictatorial 'Yancy like' powers it gave to the President in terms of being able to declare war and the Socialists complaining that it made it much harder for the government to nationalise industries it did not already control but thanks to a True Whig controlled Congress, it still passed into law in 1947. In the resulting elections for the Kings and their houses, the True Whigs dominated with Massaquoi's sister, Fatima, winning the Kingship of Galinas and both Kaba and Twe also winning their districts, as the old aristocracy were mostly voted back into power. The 1949 elections also saw comfortable victories for the True Whigs both in the senate and in the Presidential Election, though their regional results were more mixed.
Having upended Liberian Politics entirely, Massaquoi was much more hands off in his second term, with the economy continuing to boom and crime falling, he has able to concentrate on foreign politics. It was under Massaquoi that the first Liberian forces, a battalion of Vai volunteers, fought as part of a UN peacekeeping operation in Korea. And it was under Massaquoi that Liberia began to truly flex the freedom won by its alliance with the USA, speaking openly of the end of European colonisation and hosting regular meetings of independence activists, many of whom were Liberian educated and in favour of pan africanism, within Monrovia with promises of their eventual unification.
To an extent, this was a misreading of Liberian public opinion. While there was widespread sympathy for the captive nations and a hope for their eventual freedom, there was also still many who remembered the French occupation and were wary of such bold steps. There was also a genuine fear of being joined to strangers who they had nothing in common with. There was to be no third term for Massaquoi, let alone the fourth his father had won, the PU's nationalist appeal of no further expansion helped them win back the Presidency for the first time in 16 years. In this they were hugely helped by a split in the pan-african vote, thanks to a Socialist surge under their charismatic new leader, the great grandson of Liberia's old enemy, Samuri Ture.