‘I Will Step Down Today If 49 Lawmakers Meet & Give Reasons’ – Speaker Koffa Maintains Due Process Must Be Followed

MONROVIA – With the Supreme Court of Liberia having started hearing into his Bill of Information filed against House Majority Leader Richard Koon and members of their “Majority Bloc”, embattled House Speaker Cllr. J. Fonati Koffa says he is ready to step down today if 49 of his colleagues appear in chambers and state the reasons for his ouster.

“We will not even go to court or say anything. I will step down the same day,” House Speaker Koffa said in a televised interview with Daniel Moore, head of AYV Connect Africa during the course of the week.

According to Speaker Koffa, one cannot be for democracy only when it favors you. “You have to be for democracy, period. What is important in any democracy is the constitution and the rules that we go by, because we set the rules of the game before we start to play. We don’t make it up as we go along. We don’t say, before the game 49 is required, then in the middle of the game we say we can only reach to 42 so 42 is good enough,” Speaker Koffa said, adding, there is a logical reason why the framers of the constitution said it takes 37 lawmakers to elect a speaker, but 49 to remove him.”

He continued: “This is because the constitution and the framers recognized that any attack on this branch of government is destabilizing. The only people who will tell you everything is fine in Liberia now are those people who got their heads buried in the sand and pretend that all is well. But the entire world has now focused on this problem and the House is destabilized.

“There is somebody running around calling himself speaker and looking for recognition, that is not given. You can’t be that dense in your head and that uncaring to say look, it’s well, we have it under control, and the Legislature is not functioning.

“There are those who say why I should resign for the sake of the country. No, why don’t we go by the rules of the constitution and the House for the sake of the country? Why is it that the removal of the speaker is the most important thing on your agenda? Why is it not the education of children? Why is it not the health of our people? Why is it not the empowerment of women and businesses? Why is it not the rule of law? Why are they not the important things to you but the important thing to you is the removal of the speaker?” Cllr. Fonati Koffa wondered rhetorically.