‘We’ll Kill You if We Have To” -Unknown Man Threatens Koffa’s Life, Speaker’s Office Alarms

MONROVIA – As tension rises in the country over lingering feud between two groups of belligerent factions in the House of Representatives, coupled with Supreme Court opinion over the weekend which has a become a source of dispute amongst Liberians, the office of House Speaker J. Fonati Koffa has reported yesterday that an unknown person has threatened to kill him.

A late evening press released signed by the speaker’s media officer, Chris Kieh, said the Speaker of the House of Representatives, J. Fonati Koffa, received a threat from an unknown number warning that he would be killed if he does not resign.

The release further states that in response to the threat on the life of the House Speaker, the security detail of the Speaker has informed its counterparts in the Joint Security of the country and that the matter is currently under investigation.

“The Speaker is safe, and is spending a quiet evening at home with his family,” the release further noted, apparently calming nerves.

“Koffa, the speaker job is for the UP,” the unknown would-be assassin wrote an SMS text message. “Our party won’t sit there and reward it’s [sic] enemies. We will kill you if we have to. A hint to the wise is sufficient. RESIGN NOW.”

The Speaker and his “minority bloc” of the House of Representatives have been a troubling torn in the flesh of the “majority bloc” which has opted to oust him from the prestigious post.

It has been over two months since the “majority bloc” has tried to remove Koffa over a litany of alleged corrupt practices and violations of their rules by the Speaker, but all efforts have not been successful.

Each time the dissenting lawmakers came close to removing him, the Speaker would seek shelter under the law, praying for the intervention of the High Court of the Country.

The alleged threats to Koffa’s life came almost immediately when the High Court had delivered its opinion, though widely believed to be controversial, declaring as “ultra vires” the actions and meetings the “majority bloc”.

It can be recalled that in January this year, members of the House of Representatives conducted a hotly conducted election of its officers at which time Koffa defeated the governing party’s lawmaker and candidate Richard N. Koon.

Since the loss of that post, the Unity Party has been maneuvering to achieve, through coercion, what could not achieve in an open election back in January.

It has used defection, recalcitrance to return to status quo, spending time in hotels, holding parallel deliberations, amongst other things, to pull their speaker down.

So far, none of the sort has made the Grand Kru lawmaker to cede power to the opponents, audaciously contending that he will never resign until the country’s rule of law regime fails him.