THE MAJORITY BLOCK’S break-in and forceful entry into the office of Speaker Jonathan Fonati Koffa’s assigned office, and catapulting his personal properties therefrom in the open, has unveiled and crowned their political barbarism and entitlement. We unequivocally condemn the action of these desperados and call on well-meaning Liberians to do the same.
A LITTLE OVER a year ago, the self-styled Speaker Richard Koon of the majority block went into a political contestation with Speaker Koffa for the job. Following canvasing amongst the rest of their colleagues, Richard Koon was given a bloody nose, while Koffa flew in colors. Since his crushing defeat in January of 2024, Koon backed by his lackeys have found no other democratic and legal means to fight back; they have refused to use the intellectual arena of the House to fight back. What they have resorted to doing is employing brute force, coercion, and raw defiance of the law, even to the detriment of Liberia’s governance tradition underpinned by constitutional separation of powers.
WORST STILL, ON February 11, while the nation was celebrating their men and women in arms, celebrating the country’s cherished recovery from the barbarity of 14 years of war to 20 years of civility, order and rule of law, Koon’s hoodlums and burglars were at the sacred corridors of the Liberian Legislature throwing diggers and hammers on the locked doors of Speaker Koffa, forcibly breaking in and entering. To the shock of the world, on cameras powered by the internet, Koon forces were seen throwing out in open space personal effects of the man who flogged him at the ballot box – the legitimate Speaker of the House of Representatives – for the sole purpose to occupy the office.
WE WONDER IF Koon is the shame big time using crude, unlawful means to occupy a job he could not win civilly and popularly. How will Koon feel sitting behind a desk in an office he could not win democratically but violently?
IF SUCH A rare political attitude is not the mother of desperation for power, if it is not akin to wartime barbarity that resulted in the perishing of more than 250,000 of our compatriots, then we want to know what it is. What question is, what give Koon and his villains the audacity to do these nasty things – to railway the laws and constitution of this country, to bully his way upon the people of this country, to display jungle justice so viciously and unremorsefully?
AND SADLY, THE nation is sleeping on these uncouth behaviors of the so-called majority block and their obstinate leader. The civil society – even the Council of Churches, the student community and other groups known yesteryears for their robust advocacy against rebel-styled tendencies – are all mut. Or is it a tacit admittance that Koon or his Unity Party patronizing his sheer rebellion against civility and the law of the country with reckless abandon are entitled to the country and all the powers ascribed than other Liberians and Liberian groups?
THIS IS NOT far. This is evil. And it warrants unanimous condemnation of all good people of this. For us, we strong condemn the Koon rebellion that all the barbarity and abstinence that come it.