MONROVIA – A constitutional battle over Liberia’s political landscape is now before the Sixth Judicial Circuit Civil Law Court in Monrovia, as the Liberian People’s Party has formally petitioned the bench to declare Section 5A of the 2014 Amended Elections Law void for being fundamentally inconsistent with the 1986 Constitution. The LPP, which secured approximately 1.44 percent of the national presidential vote in the October 2023 elections without winning a legislative seat, faces suspension and deregistration by the National Elections Commission under a provision the party argues criminalizes minority political expression, violates equal protection guarantees, and tends toward the unconstitutional establishment of a one-party state. As THE ANALYST reports, the petition has been assigned to Resident Circuit Judge J. Kennedy Peabody.
The petition, filed by the prominent law firm Gongloe & Associates, Inc., in association with the Public Interest Law Office on Airfield Shortcut, 24th Street, Sinkor in Monrovia, names the National Elections Commission as the sole respondent and advances a sweeping, multi-count constitutional challenge that strikes at the legal foundations of one of the more controversial provisions in Liberia’s electoral framework.
Signed by five attorneys — Abubarkar M.S. Kiawu, Momolu G. Kandakai, Daouda M. Keita, Philip Y. Gongloe, and Tiawan S. Gongloe — with additional representation from Public Interest Law Office attorneys Stephen J.C.S. Kai and Lawrence Tomah, the petition represents one of the most formidable legal coalitions assembled in recent Liberian electoral law litigation. Counsellor Tiawan Saye Gongloe personally appeared before a Justice of the Peace in Montserrado County and swore a supporting affidavit, attesting that the allegations of law and fact in the petition are true and correct to the best of his knowledge.
The Provision Under Attack
At the center of the legal storm is Section 5A(1) of the Amended Elections Law of 2014, which mandates that any political party or independent candidate failing to secure at least two percent of total valid votes cast in a general election — or failing to win a legislative seat — shall be suspended or deregistered by the NEC and barred from nominating candidates in the next two successive elections.
For the LPP, those numbers tell a damning story. In the October 10, 2023 Presidential and Legislative Elections, the party fielded candidates in both the presidential and legislative contests. Its presidential performance yielded approximately 1.44 percent of the valid votes cast nationwide — slightly below the two percent threshold — while none of its legislative candidates won a seat.
The NEC has accordingly threatened to enforce Section 5A against the LPP, which would suspend or deregister the party and bar it from participating in the 2029 elections and any subsequent cycle falling within the two-election window. The LPP argues this enforcement would amount to a constitutionally impermissible annihilation of a legitimately organized political entity whose only offense was receiving fewer votes than an arbitrary statutory benchmark.
The petition establishes the court’s jurisdiction on firm ground, noting that the Sixth Judicial Circuit Civil Law Court is “a court of record established under the authority of Article 65 of the 1986 Constitution of Liberia” and is “vested with original jurisdiction to hear and determine actions for Declaratory Judgment pursuant to Chapter 43 of the Civil Procedure Law of Liberia.”
Venue, the petition further states, is uncontested: the NEC’s headquarters is located in Montserrado County, and the subject matter of the dispute arises within that jurisdiction.
Appended to the petition as exhibit P/1 is a comprehensive institutional package confirming the LPP’s standing as a duly registered political party, including a certified copy of the Executive Committee resolution authorizing the filing of the petition, the party’s constitution, its certificate of registration, certificate of accreditation, articles of incorporation, a sworn statement of assets, liabilities and net worth, an annual account statement from International Bank (Liberia) Limited, a bank authorization letter, and a copy of the party’s current lease agreement for its headquarters on the Capitol Bye-Pass adjacent to the Conex filling station.
The Constitutional Architecture Of The Challenge
The LPP’s legal team has constructed a multi-pronged constitutional challenge across more than twenty counts, systematically invoking nearly every constitutional provision that speaks to political participation, freedom of expression, equal protection, and the regulation of political parties. Each count builds upon the last, creating what the petition’s drafters clearly intended as an interlocking constitutional indictment of Section 5A’s validity.
Article 1 — Power Inherent in the People: The petition opens its substantive challenge by invoking the foundational democratic principle of Article 1 of the 1986 Constitution, which declares that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are instituted by their authority and for their benefit, and that the people shall have the right to cause their public servants to leave office and to fill vacancies by regular elections. The LPP argues that Section 5A directly undermines this principle by stripping citizens of the political vehicle through which they collectively exercise that inherent power, punishing them not for any conduct, but solely for the outcome of a democratic exercise.
Article 77(a) — The One-Party State Prohibition: Perhaps the most politically potent constitutional argument in the petition centers on Article 77(a), which the LPP deploys with particular force. That article declares that “the essence of democracy is free competition of ideas expressed by political parties and political groups” and explicitly mandates that “any law or measure tending to establish a one-party state shall be unconstitutional.” The LPP argues that Section 5A, by deregistering parties based solely on electoral performance, reduces political competition and mechanically tends toward a political environment in which only large, well-resourced parties survive — the very architectural precondition of a one-party or rigid two-party system that the Constitution expressly forbids.
Articles 11(b) and 11(c) — Equal Protection and Non-Discrimination: The petition invokes Article 11(c)’s guarantee that all persons are equal before the law and entitled to equal protection, arguing that Section 5A creates an irrational and discriminatory two-tiered classification system among political parties: those that clear the two-percent threshold or win a legislative seat, and those that do not. This classification, the LPP contends, is “unreasonable, irrational, and discriminatory” because it unjustly penalizes smaller parties and their supporters, depriving them of equal access to the political process. Article 11(b), which the petition also cites, guards against discrimination in the enjoyment of rights — a protection the LPP argues is flagrantly violated when minority political viewpoints are effectively extinguished through a numeric deregistration mechanism.
Article 17 — Freedom of Association: Article 17 guarantees all persons the right to associate fully with others in political parties and organizations, subject only to the Constitution. The petition argues that by conditioning the continued legal existence of a political party on meeting an electoral threshold, Section 5A impermissibly infringes upon the constitutional right of citizens to freely associate in political parties of their choosing. The LPP is emphatic: “The right of association cannot be conditioned upon electoral performance, and any attempt to do so is unconstitutional and void under Article 2 of the Constitution.”
Article 15 — Freedom of Expression and Political Advocacy: The petition advances a sophisticated free-expression argument anchored in Article 15, which guarantees freedom of expression including political advocacy. Article 15(a), it notes, explicitly commands that the right to freedom of expression “shall not be curtailed, restricted or enjoined by government save during an emergency declared in accordance with this Constitution.” Since no emergency exists, the LPP argues that suspending or deregistering a political party because of poor electoral performance constitutes an unconstitutional suppression of protected political expression — “an unconstitutional legislative encroachment upon the marketplace of ideas and an unlawful prior restraint on free expression.”
Articles 78, 79, and 80 — The Constitutional Grounds for Deregistration: In one of the petition’s most legally precise arguments, the LPP demonstrates that the Constitution already establishes the exclusive grounds upon which a political party may be deregistered. Articles 78, 79, and 80, read together, permit deregistration only where a party engages in activities aimed at abolishing Liberia’s free and democratic society, endangering the existence of the Republic, or training and equipping persons to use physical force or coercion in pursuit of political objectives. The LPP is direct: it has not engaged in any such conduct. The NEC therefore “lacks constitutional authority to revoke its registration on the ground that it failed to attain a particular electoral threshold in a specific election, as such a basis for revocation is neither contemplated nor authorized by the Constitution.” Section 5A, the petition argues, unconstitutionally expands the constitutional deregistration framework by adding a ground — electoral underperformance — that the framers of the 1986 Constitution deliberately chose not to include.
Article 81 — The Right to Canvass and Participate in Elections: Article 81 guarantees every political party the right to canvass for votes and participate in elections. A suspended or deregistered party, the petition notes with plain logic, cannot exercise this constitutional right. The LPP argues that by stripping parties of their ability to participate in the electoral process based solely on past results, Section 5A directly violates this guarantee.
Article 5(a) — The Mandatory Directive on Citizen Participation: In a final and sweeping constitutional count, the petition invokes Article 5(a), which places upon the Legislature a mandatory directive to enact laws that promote national unification and “the encouragement of all citizens to participate in government.” The LPP argues that Section 5A achieves the precise opposite: “instead of encouraging broad citizen participation, it actively engineers a statutory choke-hold that discourages, excludes, and bans citizens from participating in governance via their chosen platforms.” To allow Section 5A to stand, the petition concludes, would mean the judiciary tolerates a statute that “aggressively undermines the foundational spirit and explicit text of the very Constitution from which the Legislature derives its powers.”
The political opinion argument: a discriminatory caste system
Running through all the specific constitutional violations is a broader philosophical argument that the LPP’s legal team advances with particular force. The petition contends that the right to hold and manifest a “political opinion” is not merely an abstract thought process. It includes, they argue, the right to structurally organize and sustain that opinion through a registered political entity.
“By operationalizing an automatic, numeric deregistration and suspension mechanism,” the petition states, “Section 5A effectively penalizes and dismantles minority political organizations. This creates a discriminatory caste system within the country whereby citizens holding minority views are deprived of their institutional voice based solely on the electoral choices they made — a flagrant overreach that Article 11(b) explicitly forbids.”
The imagery of a “caste system” is deliberately chosen. It frames Section 5A not merely as a technical regulatory provision but as a structural mechanism that permanently relegates minority political actors to second-class democratic status — a result the petition insists is incompatible with any honest reading of the 1986 Constitution.
The Prayer: Void Ab Initio
The LPP’s prayer to the court is unambiguous and sweeping. It asks the Honorable Court to declare and adjudge, in keeping with Article 2 of the Constitution — which establishes the supremacy of the Constitution over all laws — that Section 5A of the Amended Elections Law of 2014 is “void ab initio,” meaning null from the very moment of its enactment, for being inconsistent with Articles 1, 77(a), 11(b and c), 5(a), 78, 79, 80, 81, and 17 of the 1986 Constitution of Liberia. The petition also seeks such other and further relief as the court deems just, legal, and equitable under the circumstances.
Judge Peabody has been directed to issue a writ of summons against the NEC, directing the Sheriff for the Civil Law Court to have the Commission summoned and to appear on a date to be determined, failing which judgment by default will be rendered. The Sheriff is further directed to make official returns endorsed on the original writ of summons as to the manner of service before the scheduled return date.
Senator Dillon Raises The Jurisdictional Question
The filing has not gone uncommented upon in public circles. Senator Jackie Bruce Dillon was among the first public voices to question the petition’s choice of forum, posting a pointed challenge on social media:
“Our erudite Lawyer Tiawon S. Gongloe has filed a ‘Petition’ seeking for a ‘Declaratory Judgement’ before the Civil Law Court to declare ‘unconstitutional’ a provision of the Elections Law. Is the Civil Law Court the proper legal forum to declare a law ‘inconsistent and or unconstitutional’? Is the Civil Law Court the Court of ‘competent jurisdiction’ to hear and settle on such matter? Am I missing something???”
Senator Dillon’s question touches a genuinely important procedural threshold in Liberian constitutional jurisprudence — one that has been tested before. In an apparent response to the senator’s public query, Counsellor Tiawan Gongloe directed The Analyst’s attention to a landmark 2011 Supreme Court decision that speaks directly to this exact question.
The 2011 Precedent: Nec V. Liberty Party — And Gongloe’s Own Role
In a twist loaded with legal irony, the controlling precedent on the jurisdictional question was decided in a case in which Counsellor Tiawan S. Gongloe himself appeared — but on the opposite side of the table. In National Elections Commission v. Liberty Party, decided by the Honorable Supreme Court of Liberia on October 10, 2011, in its Special Session, Gongloe represented the National Elections Commission as respondent. The petitioner in that matter was none other than the Liberty Party, whose standard bearer was Counsellor Charles Walker Brumskine, and whose institutional challenge involved, among other things, the same Civil Law Court — the same Sixth Judicial Circuit — as the current LPP petition.
By sending the 2011 case to The Analyst, Gongloe was implicitly offering his own legal answer to Senator Dillon’s jurisdictional challenge: the Civil Law Court is precisely where such petitions belong. As he noted with evident satisfaction, the senator’s own political party’s predecessor legal ally had been wrong on the same point. “Is he saying his party was wrong?” Gongloe asked, referring to Senator Dillon’s apparent alignment with Liberty Party precedent.
What the 2011 Supreme Court Decided
The 2011 case arose from three separate petitions for declaratory judgment filed before the Civil Law Court, all against the NEC. The Liberty Party filed its petition on February 8, 2011, challenging the seven-member composition of the NEC as illegal under the New Elections Law of 1986, which specified a five-member commission. The Movement for Progressive Change filed two similar petitions. The consolidated cases were ultimately heard by the Supreme Court sitting in Special Session before Chief Justice Johnnie N. Lewis and Associate Justices Francis S. Korkpor Sr., Kabineh M. Ja’neh, Jamesetta Howard Wolokolie, and Philip A.Z. Banks III, with Madam Justice Wolokolie delivering the opinion of the Court.
The Liberty Party’s core argument on the composition question was that an amendment to the Elections Law approved on December 27, 2002, under former President Charles Taylor, which increased the NEC’s membership from five to seven commissioners, was constitutionally suspect and possibly fraudulently enacted. The party advanced a series of speculative propositions about the legislative calendar and presidential approval timelines to argue the amendment could not have been legitimately passed.
The Supreme Court was unimpressed with those arguments. It held that the Liberty Party’s propositions were “only assumptions attaining no legal status upon which any court can act” and rejected the contention that the burden of proof lay with NEC to prove the law was legally passed. In Liberian jurisprudence, laws printed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are prima facie evidence of their legitimate passage. The petitioner needed to produce substantive evidence — not speculation — that the amendment was fraudulently enacted. This the Liberty Party failed to do.
But the Supreme Court’s most consequential ruling for the current LPP case arose from the trial court’s handling of the jurisdictional question. The trial court below — the very same Civil Law Court — had declined to pass on the NEC composition issue, ruling that it was a “constitutional issue cognizable only before the Honorable Supreme Court.” The Supreme Court reversed that determination in unambiguous terms, finding that the trial court “reneged on his responsibility” and that his ruling “was clearly erroneous.”
The Court’s reasoning was precise: the question of whether an act was legally passed into law “required the taking of evidence” and was therefore a factual and statutory matter, not a pure constitutional question requiring direct Supreme Court intervention. Citing its own ruling in In Re: The Petition of Benjamin J. Cox, 36 LLR 837, 849 (1990), the Court stated plainly that “when a case brought before a lower court involves factual allegations, the lower court must take evidence and satisfy itself as to the truthfulness of the factual allegations set out in the pleadings before it can refer the matter to the Supreme Court, if indeed a referral is appropriate.”
This ruling is directly relevant to the LPP’s current petition. It establishes that the Civil Law Court has both the jurisdiction and the obligation to hear declaratory judgment petitions — including those involving statutory and constitutional questions — as the court of first instance. The Supreme Court intervenes as the final appellate authority, not as the initial forum. Senator Dillon’s jurisdictional concern, while legally reasonable on its face, runs against the weight of established Supreme Court authority.
The NEC’s Sua Sponte Power: Another 2011 Ruling
The 2011 Supreme Court decision also addressed a second major issue that has indirect relevance to the LPP’s current litigation: whether the NEC may, on its own initiative — “sua sponte” — cite a political party for election law violations without first receiving a formal complaint from a third party.
The trial court in the 2011 matter had ruled that NEC could not proceed without a complaint, holding that “such hearing is commenced with the filing of a complaint by an aggrieved party or person before the Elections Commission.” On that issue, the Supreme Court reversed the trial court, holding that the NEC, as an independent regulatory and adjudicatory agency, is “clothed with the authority to and may commence proceedings on its own initiative where it believes that either the Elections Law or its Rules, Regulations or Guidelines have been violated by a political party or an independent candidate.”
However, the Supreme Court simultaneously issued a rebuke of NEC’s selective enforcement, noting that the Commission had previously stated in press coverage that it “cannot touch” alleged Unity Party campaign finance violations “if such allegations are not brought officially to its attention” — while simultaneously moving sua sponte against the Liberty Party. The Court found this contradiction “has the propensity to bring into question NEC’s fairness in its treatment of all parties” and made clear that the Commission must “demonstrate in all its treatments that it is a disinterested and independent umpire.”
That ruling on selective enforcement may have particular resonance for the LPP’s current case, especially if the party can argue that NEC has applied the deregistration provisions of Section 5A unevenly or selectively among political parties in similar circumstances.
The Nomenclature Question and Its Limits
The 2011 decision also disposed of a third question raised by the Movement for Progressive Change: whether the word “National” prefaced to “Elections Commission” — yielding “National Elections Commission” — violated the Elections Law of 1986 and the Constitution, which designated the body simply as the “Elections Commission.” The MPC argued the “National” prefix derived from a 2004 transitional elections reform law that had since expired.
The Supreme Court dismissed this argument comprehensively, holding that the Legislature’s broad authority to enact laws governing elections institutions — including assigning them names — does not strip it of the power to add an adjectival prefix that does not contradict the constitutional intent of the institution. “We hold that there is nothing in the appellation ‘National’ that appears to us to be inconsistent with the intent and object of the writers of the Liberian Constitution,” the Court declared, adding that substance must be held over form.
Broader Stakes: A Constitutional Moment for Liberia’s Multi-Party System
The LPP’s petition arrives at a moment of considerable significance for Liberian democratic politics. A successful challenge to Section 5A would not merely rescue the LPP from deregistration; it would potentially restore standing to every small political party facing the same enforcement threat following the 2023 elections — a class of parties that observers believe could include more than a dozen organizations that failed to clear the two-percent threshold.
The case also places before the court a fundamental question about what kind of democracy the 1986 Constitution was designed to foster: one that Darwinistically thins the political field after every election cycle, or one that guarantees the constitutional right of minority political movements to organize, compete, and remain in contention even when their initial electoral showing is modest.
The LPP is unequivocal about its answer to that question. “No constitution is sacred,” Acting Governance Commission Chairman Alaric K. Tokpa said this week in a different but related context, speaking about Liberia’s need for constitutional reform. The LPP might well borrow that formulation and invert it: no ordinary statute is sacrosanct when it conflicts with the Constitution from which all legislative authority flows.
The matter is currently before Resident Circuit Judge J. Kennedy Peabody at the Temple of Justice in Monrovia. The NEC has been summoned to appear and answer the petition. Whether the Commission will seek to have the petition dismissed on jurisdictional or substantive grounds, or whether it will defend the constitutionality of Section 5A on the merits, remains to be seen. What is already certain is that the outcome of this case will carry consequences — legal, political, and democratic — that extend well beyond the Liberian People’s Party.