LIBERIAN POLITICIANS AND leaders are at it again—demonstrating obsession in obstinacy, pride, arrogance, greed and selfishness—embroiled in a conflict that could end in a day if they had shed those innate traits. And meanwhile, they are cool with it, they and their families having more than a meal a day, assured of medical treatment if sick, enjoying regular electricity, water and all the niceties of modernity, while the vast majority of the people are eking out a living, seared by abject poverty and disease. What the lawmakers at the House of Representatives and their Executive Branch collaborators have subjected Liberians to is no different from what the warlords of the 1990s did. During the war days, while Liberians were dying, languishing in pains and agony, warlords were in the capitals of foreign nations basking in safety and pleasure under the guise of talking peace.
ONE WONDERS WHEN this grand scheme by the ruling class to deprive the masses of the people of this country—drowning them in the deeper of poverty while they walk the land of gold—come to an end? Because, as we speak, while essential goods, including fuel and food are increasing daily, transportation fares unbearable for the poor, roads leading to the interior parts are poised to be unpliable, the entire Southeast cut off as Cestos River Bridge in ruins, politicians on Capitol Hill, along with their Executive accomplices who were elected to solve those problems and make life livable in the country are still bickering endlessly. Meanwhile, they are being paid their emoluments on time, and life is going well with them and family. Nearly a year and half, that has sadly been the state of the country and its impoverished majority.
NO ONE CARES. NO one wants to give way in the interest of the suffering people of Liberia. All are grandstanding, and stonewalling. Of particular concern is the group of lawmakers who called themselves ‘majority bloc’, and the president of the nation, Joseph Boakai.
SINCE MAN, BY nature, is brutish and lawless, for which civilization created the culture “rule of law” towards creating peace and harmony for all, why is the president and his ‘majority bloc’ on Capitol Hill can’t do the most honorable thing – listening to the voice of reason, respecting the Constitution of the country, which says the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of justice?
IN OUR VIEW, this entire conflict can end in day one, and it can end right now only and only if President Boakai and his collaborators could allow this happen: get parties sign to an agreement whereby Koffa is given a week or two to preside over a process prioritizing election of new speaker, and whereby the “majority bloc” would leverage its numerical strength in plenary to depose and replace him. And all indications are that Koffa is opting for a transitional talk that would lead to an arrangement that would give him a soft landing – something the High Court subtly acknowledged and provided.
SOMEONE MAY ASK, ‘What about Koffa? What sacrifice can he make too to end the standoff?” Yes, he could play a role. He played his part. He Brought clarity, as per High Court analysis, how a Speaker of the House could be removed.
COULD HE HAVE done more? Yes, he could. “For the sake of country”, like Edwin Melvin Snowe or like Alex Tyler, resign. But what is legally, historically and political good about Koffa’s insistence is this: test of Liberia’s rule of law regime; questioning or possibly breaking the cycle of the culture of legislative ‘majority tyranny” that was becoming a norm. That is good for history, for our democracy and our international image.
WHEN PRESIDENT BOAKAI in a statement last weekend began talking about Liberia is “a country governed by laws, not by mobs or self-serving ambition,” and that those who “undermine the peace, violate the law, or seek to disrupt national harmony will face the full force of the law and justice”, we had thought he was driving towards upholding the Supreme Court, because that exactly the Court did and Koffa asked for. But, unfortunately, President Boakai was saying something else. Instead of salvaging an intractable problem or allowing the High Court to do so, he has worsened it. And the nation is now settled for a long haul, yet again.
BUT THERE IS a way out. Liberians don’t deserve this madness of the ruling class. And no one can tempt the people to take the law in their own hands – to engage into potentially troublesome street protests before the government acts properly. The simple, more peaceful and tenable way out is for Boakai and his ‘majority bloc’ to reach an agreement whereby Speaker Koffa will set up a transitional team, organize election of a new speaker, restore amenities to lawmakers revoked by the majority bloc, and the House of Representatives of the 55th National Legislature begin anew.
DOING OTHERWISE IS folly, and injurious to our democracy, and to our national and international image.
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