MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT: Subject: Withdraw Suspension of NEC’s Chairperson Lest It Confirms Critics’ Cynicism of Your Anti-Democratic Credentials

Your Excellency!

We are not beating around the bush about this matter. Cancel the suspension of National Election Commission Executive Chairperson, Davidetta Browne-Lasannah. Withdraw it quickly, and safe your name for once. Protect our democratic culture. Sheild your legacy.

Mr. President, we have heard all the reasons for your action, and we found them flippant and groundless for such a grave tempering with, if not attack on, a major democratic institution.

You gave two justifications for your action: The NEC Chairperson’s “unilateral” closure of NEC office for a month, and the dismissal of 25 employees without NEC Board approval.

How are these two actions by Madam Browne-Lasannah become criminal and egregious to constitute indefinite suspension of the head of one of the country’s integrity institutions is anyone’s wonders.

For your information, Your Excellency, the National Elections Commission is one of three – only three – state institutions specifically placed in the heart of our “organic law” the Constitution, serving has chief cornerstones and fulcrums of our constitutional rule and democracy, the other two being the General Auditing Commission (GAC) and Civil Service Agency (CSA). The framers of the Constitution did not place these institutions in the organic law for any mundane reason; they did so intentionally to accentuate and herald the critical importance to national governance, to solidify our democratic culture, and for peace and order. It was a firm declaration of immutability of these institutions to political pressure, manipulation and influence.

It is highly unfortunate, Mr. President, that while other countries, such as Ghana whose 9^th transitions you just witnessed, are building and protecting these important state institutions, not only to perfect their democratic governance systems but also to underpin genuine peace and development, you are moving in an opposite direction.

History has already recorded that in your first year alone as President of this country, you embarked upon the spree of desecrating and de-insulating almost all integrity institutions, dismissing or suspending them for time in definite under similar bogus justifications, rendering them vulnerable and subservient to your powers and whims. From the Central Bank of Liberia to the Governance Commission and to many others previously tenured integrity institutions, your iron-fisted gavel has dismantled and put into reverse gear the little progress this country was making in terms of peace, democracy and good governance.

Not only have you shattered all hopes and trust in our integrity institutions, laying them prostrate before your almighty gavel, you have also extended the aggression to the Legislature and the Judiciary. Without the fear of God, respect for the rule of law and the voices of the people, you entered the Legislature and shattered it with manipulative imbroglios, with divisive tactics over House Speaker position. Today, that sacred democratic domain – the Legislature – is plunged in flames of hate, fires and endless bitterness that will take decades to repair. You did not stop at that. You also viperously attacked the Judiciary, the Supreme Court, with contempt, defiance and degradation, floating its ruling and imputing your spin and wisdom on its official edicts.

Your Excellency, just in a short while of your incumbency, while you are yet to hit your first anniversary as President of Liberia, the cruel fangs and toxins of intolerant and seemingly despotic tendencies are spreading all over our democratic landscape, and a lot of people are bracing themselves for the worst in the coming years.

There are predictions that in the near future, Liberians should be ready to see you suspending or dismissing the justices of the Supreme Court and its subordinate courts. They say when you can do it to the House Speaker, who is third in Constitutional succession, when you can scrap the rulings of the High Court, then you can decimate the Judiciary. They say it is only a matter of time when you become almighty and no order of governance you inherited can stand our maneuvers.

Is that the legacy you would like to leave behind – that you left behind the traits of the most venous imperial presidency in history?

Maybe “yes”, maybe “no”. And the right answer begins with whether your suspension of the Chair of Liberia’s electoral management body, which is Constitutionally and legally insulated from presidential interferences, will remain in force or rescinded.

And the world is watching.

Thanks for your time.