Liberia: Tribute To Liberias first Post-War President------Rev. Blamo. Former Liberian president Gyude Bryant, who led a peacetime government after two ruinous back-to-back civil wars, died aged 65 on Wednesday, the government said in a statement. A successful entrepreneur and politician, Bryant helped set up the Liberia Action Party (LAP) and was seen as an independent player in Liberian politics. The soft-spoken but forthright Bryant led a 21-member government divided up under the August peace pact among Taylor loyalists, rebels, the political opposition and civic groups. Bryant graduated from Liberias prestigious Cuttington University College with a degree in economics and was hired in 1972 by the Mesurado Group of Companies, then Liberias largest private conglomerate, as fleet manager of a fishing company. In 1973, he joined the National Port Authority as head of planning and development. Anxious to branch out on his own, Bryant founded the Liberia Machinery and Supply Company in 1977, distributing mining and port handling equipment. His involvement in civic and political affairs began in the 1970s. In 1984, when the then military junta lifted a ban on political activity, he joined a number of other prominent political and business leaders to found the LAP. In 1992, he was elected chairman of LAP and used his position to build the party into an institution that has played a leading role in bringing the previously fractious Liberian opposition together. Five years later, he brought six parties into an alliance to contest elections, following the end of a seven-year civil war marked by extremes of brutality. Those elections were won by Taylor, who soon found himself at the receiving end of a vicious new four-year civil war which led him to lose control of four-fifths of his war-battered country to rebel movements. Near the end of Taylors rule, Liberias seaside capital was besieged for more than two months by the main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Bryant, a devout Christian and leading member of the Episcopal Church, was no stranger to controversy in retirement. we extend our deepest sympathy.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 12:22:19 +0000
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