Monrovia – A hearing called by the senate autonomous committee has found serious disagreements and division amongst members of the board of commissioners of the National Election Commission. (NEC).
The revelation comes weeks before 2023 when Liberia will be going to a major presidential and legislative elections.
The disagreement surrounds the recent awarding of a contract to the LAXTON GROUP to provide biometric voter registration. The disagreement is between Madam Davidetta Browne-Lansannah and her co-chair who disagrees with her boss on the awarding of the contract. The NEC’s chair, Lansannah is also accusing her deputy of trying to change the report submitted by the vetting committee.
By: Henry Karmo
In a November 22, 2022, communication from Cllr. Reeves questioning the chairperson, Cllr. Brown Lansanah wrote the Public Procurement Concessions Commission (PPCC) for ‘No Objection’ because the Evaluation Panel did not follow instructions on the process that should have been followed.
The Evaluation Committee was tasked to look out for the most responsive bidder in terms of value for money, delivery in the shortest possible time, and ability to pre-finance.
Cllr. Reeves reminded the chairperson that she had previously written the PPCC on October 21, 2022, indicating that the LAXTON Group used laptops during their demonstration and not tablets as prescribed by the bid and as a result checked to be unresponsive.
She also included that LAXTON had the longest delivery time of 147 days from the signing of the contract.
In her response, Cllr. Davidetta Brown Lansanah said, everything she has done is in keeping with the law which gives her power as chair of the NEC and subsequently head of the procurement process.
According to her she informed members of the board of commission about her decision to forward the vetting committee’s findings to the PPCC and did not need other members of the board
In her absence, the vetting committee selected LAXTON and submitted their report to her co-chair on the 15th of November while she was away, but the co-chair refused to submit the report to the PPCC.
The Chair noted: “It was also my understanding that some members of the committee were decided on choosing Waymark/Mwetena because they did not want the Co-chair to institute another panel to conduct another bidding process. It is my understanding that the second panel the co-chair had established was working to choose Waymark/Mwetena.”
Three of the six other commissioners told members of the senate that they were not consulted by their chair before submitting the name of LAXTON to the PPCC as winner of the bidding process.
NEC previous recommendation to PPCC.
In the NEC’s previous recommendations to the PPCC, the chairperson of the Commission said the comparative audit income statements of each of the bidders showed that only Ekemp/INITS/Palm and Laxton have implemented a project worth the amount earmarked over the last two years.
Madam Davidetta Brown-Lansannah also said Laxton failed to provide audited financial statements for the immediate past year (2021), which is a requirement in the standard bidding documents.
Laxton only provided statements for the fiscal years 2020 and 2019 and did not provide audited financial statements.
Moreover, Laxton expressed a condition regarding its ability to pre-finance.
It can be recalled that there has been an unending back-and-forth communication between the two integrity institutions in the wake of the selection of one of the bidders, EKEMP, during the first round of the bidding process where PPCC objected to NEC selection and ordered a rerun of the entire process to include video recording and submission of USB drive.
Senators fear constitutional crisis
The committee on autonomous agencies chair by Senator Henrique Tokpah (IND. Bong County) said, he was implementing the mandate of the plenary of the senate who had asked the committee to investigate multiple media reports about a crisis amongst members of the board at the NEC.
Some senators including Edwin Snowe (IND-Bomi County), Abraham Dillon (LP-Montserrado County), Jeremiah Koung (MDR-Nimba County) expressed fears that if care is not taken, the commission could lead the country into a serious constitutional crisis.
This is a grave matter honorable chair and I think this is not a discussion for the public. We must act and act now,” Sen. Snowe recommended.