Liberians living in Sweden will hold two separate programs next month in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, to celebrate Liberia’s independence anniversary.

This represents a divide as the independence celebrations are usually hosted by the Liberia Swedish Association (LSA).

This split is a consequence of an election held recently for a new batch of leaders for the LSA. 

Widely considered as unfair and lacking transparency, the controversial election was conducted by just one person, Beyan Kesselly, backed by LSA president David Ford.

Kesselly is said to have family ties to at least one of the candidates from the team of candidates that, according to him, won three of the four positions up for grabs.

Kesselly and Ford reportedly rejected calls for measures to be put in place to ensure a free, fair and transparent electoral process.

The pair refused to publish the list of voters and said no to observers.

Kesselly and Ford said they would bring an independent observer. No one knows for sure whether there was any such observer.

Two of the contesting groups submitted formal letters of complaint with one group going to the polls under protest.

After the vote and the announcement of the preliminary results by Kesselly, the two groups, realizing they have a common interest, combined to file a protest, demanding the publication of the voters’ roll and also alleging, among others, that one of the candidates had a criminal record.

Kesselly dismissed their protest.

He said he would not accept a protest from a bloc as the election was contested by individual candidates even though all through the electoral process he dealt with the candidates as groups: Team Barry, Team Wilfred and Team Selina.

After much pressure, Kesselly and Ford agreed to display the voters’ roll during a meeting.

Kesselly reportedly dismissed discrepancies found in the roll as minor and said that any talk of one of the candidates having a criminal record was trivial.

The protesters said the meeting was a waste of time as Kesselly and the LSA leadership had already made up their minds to confirm the preliminary results, which was done on June 21.

Candidates declared losers by Kesselly later rejected the results.

This state of affairs angered many members of the community. LSA is on an irreversible path of division.