Monrovia – The National Muslim Council of Liberia (NMCOL), the nation’s highest Islamic body, has called on the Liberian legislature to abandon its current impeachment proceeding against Associate Justice Kabineh M. Ja’neh.
Report by Varney Kamara, Contributor
In a press statement issued in Monrovia today, the NMCOL said it is particularly concerned about the deep division that the current impeachment saga is creating amongst Liberians and in particular the three branches of government.
The group warned the three branches of government, namely the Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary to disengage in what it calls application of arbitrary state power by one branch of government against any of the other branches of the government.
Both the legislature and the judiciary have been embroiled in a legal rigmarole over the impeachment of Associate Justice Kabineh M. Ja’neh in recent weeks.
It may be recalled that a group of recently lawmakers accused the embattled Justice of breaching his status as a sitting judge on the country’s Supreme Court’s bench, as well as levying charges against him(Justice Ja’neh), including misuse of power, prove misconduct, theft of property, theft of records, among others.
Justice Ja’neh, through his legal team, has since filed a formal complaint to the Supreme Court, claiming procedural error by the House of Representatives in the preparation of an impeachment bill meant to boot him out from the Supreme Court’s bench.
The Supreme Court wrote the House of Representatives for a conference on the issue, but the House has since rejected the High Court’s injunction orders, instead of warning the nation’s final arbiter of Justice to vacate the matter or be made to face an unprecedented embarrassment.
The House has also passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of Justice Ja’neh and forwarded said instrument to the Liberian Senate for action. Meanwhile, after an initial review of the House’s impeachment resolution by the Liberian Senate, the proposed impeachment resolution has now been sent to the Senate’s judicial committee for review and recommendation. Last Thursday’s debate by the Senate on the resolution saw many Senators angrily speaking on the unlawful manner in which the impeachment resolution was presented to the Senate, which prompted the leadership of the Senate to take, seize of the matter.
As Liberians await the Senate’s decision on the matter, there are concerns in some quarters of the country that the current constitutional brouhaha, which has seen a tit-for-tat word of words clashes between members of the House of Representative and Justice Ja’neh’s legal team may bring further disunity in the country and also paralyze major government functionaries, a view firmly held by the National Muslim Council of Liberia (NMCOL), the nation’s number one Muslim organization.