IN THE WAKE of advocacies against corruption and every trace of ‘business as usual’ under the Joseph Nyuma Boakai-led government, recent revelation from the leadership of the House of Representatives about alteration of the 2024 National Fiscal Budget has remained troubling and demanding for prompt investigation.
THE PUBLIC HAS since focused on knowing who altered the national budget and for what reason such criminal act was done, hoping that a logical conclusion be reached to lay the impasse against transparency and accountability of state resources to rest.
AS IT HAS outspread, we sincerely embraced with boldness the establishment of an investigative committee by the House of Representatives through the directive of Speaker J. Fonati Koffa, to identify culprits of the alleged act of alteration of the national budget.
IN OUR MIND, what the public expected since the revelation of the alteration has been whether the criminal act really took place but most importantly, those responsible for committing such crime must be identified and named for whatever consequences thereof.
INTERESTINGLY THOUGH, WE hail the tenacity of the House’s Investigative Committee to get to the natty gritty of the allegation of national budget alteration and by this trend of insistency, the public is being told that indeed, the budget was altered.
HOWEVER, WE ARE dispirited to read from the pages of local dailies that the Investigative Committee has not been able to name those who sanctioned the alteration, instead only the deputy clerk at the Lower House has so far been made for the public to consider being the doer of the act?
LIKE OTHER CONCERNED Liberians, we caution the House of Representatives to do the needful by ensuring that all those responsible for the dubious act are not shielded for any reason, be it political or otherwise wherein the poor deputy clerk would be used as sacrificial lamp in covering up the grave misdeed discovered.
IN NO UNCERTAIN terms, it is unrealistic for a deputy clerk who takes instruction from those in leadership at the House of Representatives, to be brave and alter national budget as the insinuation seems to portray over the investigation into the reported alteration of the 2024 National Fiscal Budget of the Republic of Liberia.
WE THEREFORE ENCOURAGE the leadership of the House of Representatives not to sweep under the carpet, the very criminal syndicate discovered over tampering with our national budget for known reasons to those economic vampires who masterminded the act of alteration.