EDITORAL You’re Excellency, The Embarrassment!

THE LONG-AWAITED Supreme Court’s considered opinion in embattled House Speaker Fonati Koffa’s  Bill of Information on his forceful removal by the House of Representatives’ Majority Bloc was publically expressed in Liberia on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.

 THE HIGHEST COURT’S opinion favored embattled Speaker Koffa’s quest for the rule of law  to prevail, thereby nullifying all actions taken for more than six months by the Majority Bloc’s declared Speaker Richard Nagbe Koon’s leadership.

 IN NO UNCERTAIN terms, all legislative proceedings under the Koon’s speakership are declared illegal, including the suspensions of members of Koffa’s Minority Bloc and seizure of their salaries and benefits on order of Majority Bloc Speaker Koon.

 UNTIL THE COURT finally made its opinion in this land mark case public on Tuesday, we have consistently monitored developments emanating from both parties to be claims and counter-claims without any reached common ground for sanity to prevail in the supreme interest of the constituents who gave them the power of representation, oversight and lawmaking for six years.

 THE FORCEFUL REMOVAL of Koffa as House Speaker under the Joseph Boakai-led administration is nothing but a replica of what Liberians witnessed during the 12th years’ regime of Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf when the now Governing Unity Party was given state power to lead Liberia in 2006 and 2011.

 IN DISGUISE, THE House’s leadership tussle has been made to appeal like it is a showcase of the doctrine of the separation of power between the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches of government where no one branch can interfere in the internal business of the other.

 OF COURSE, THIS remains a fine argument but in our mind, it nurtures business as usual when, as we have disdainfully witnessed over the years of our governance system, the Executive has always been pin-pointed at using cash violence to change the top leadership portfolio not only at the House of Representatives, but also at the House of Senate once the political trademark holds in the former terrain.

 INDEED, WE MUST call sputter, a sputter! No one would be a rocket scientist to know that since the inception of the power struggle at the House of Representatives, the consequences of greed for power has rendered our supposedly respected first branch of government an embarrassment to the governed who devoted time and stood under the Sun and cast individual votes for anticipated genuine regime change.

DISAPPOINTINGLY, IT IS nothing but a glaring shame that the very wrong tendency  our Legislature was named and shamed for in the past is being repeated today under President Boakai who  served for twelve years as President of the Senate when he was Vice President of the Republic of Liberia.

 WHATEVER THE CASE is, Your Excellency, Liberia needs stability, using the rule of law as a mainstay of democratic tenets which in our mind you vowed to uphold in steering the affairs of our beloved Mama Liberia. Hence, Your Excellency, the embarrassment!