Sanniquellie, Nimba County – The election last week of three members to steer the Project Management Committee (PMC) of Nimba County has been rebuffed by a faction of the county legislative caucus, who have threatened not to work with the new leadership.
At last week’s county development sitting in Sanniquellie, 40 delegates from the 19 administrative districts of the county elected Harris Yeanamie, as head of the PMC, Sam Ta-Kruah as treasurer and Richard Nyeingar as comptroller, all of whom are staffers of lawmakers of the county.
Yeanamie is an office staff of Senator Prince Johnson, who is also the chairman of the caucus, Ta-kruah is a staffer of Nimba’s District Four lawmaker Gonpu Kargon and Nyeingar is also a staffer of District Seven lawmaker, Roger Domah.
Their elections were done in the absence of eight aggrieved candidates who were vying for the three positions. The aggrieved candidates had gone to the Eight Judicial Circuit court to mandate the court to place prohibition on the election because of claims that Johnson had threatened delegates of losing their jobs if they voted against his interest.
To avoid potential prohibition, Senator Johnson quickly conducted the election which lasted for three minutes.
Representatives Larry Younquoi (Alternative National Congress District 8, District), Samuel Korga (People’s Unification Party District Five) and Prince O.S. Tokpah (District Two, Independent) are protesting that the process that the led to the election of the three PMC leaders was fake and fraudulent and as such they won’t work with the new leadership.
“This is a complete disservice to the people of Nimba County to elect people based on affiliation rather than competence,” Rep, Younquoi said.
The three lawmakers accused Johnson of influencing the outcome of the election by threatening delegates of retaliations if they voted against his preferred choices.
Korga said they had agreed as caucus through a resolution to allow delegates cast their ballots secretly to avoid being intimidated but Johnson ignored the resolution. “He did his own thing because he wanted to influence the process. That’s was not what we discussed as a caucus,” he said.
Prior to the election, Johnson issued a caveat threatening that the caucus was not prepared to work to work with those from the opposition political parties who had expressed interest in various positions of the PMC. “It’s the MDR and CDC parties time to lead,” he said. “So, if you are from different political parties your chances of being elected are slim.”
Senator Johnson, in his reactions to his colleagues’ claims, said his colleagues are “not members of the caucus because of their ideas and agenda of the county.”