Monrovia – Members of the Nimba County Youth and Student Community say their attention has been drawn to what has glaringly appeared to be an unprovoked, unwarranted and undeserved attack on the person of His Honor Associate Justice Kabineh Mohammed Ja’neh by a group of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change government.
The organization slammed the key lawmakers behind the petition, Representatives Moses Acarous Gray and Thomas Fallah as being the tireless and shameless kingpins entangled in what the group calls a callous conspiratorial design with huge political motivation to harass, intimidate, compel the judicial branch into submission. “The issue that necessitated the calling of a special session on Saturday by the House of Representatives is completely political and entirely bereft of legal reasonability,” the organization stated in a statement Sunday.
The statement noted: “We feel very strongly that Liberia has come a very long way from the dark days of a political party and its machinery manipulating, maneuvering and dictating on what happens at the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of the Government of Liberia. The days of having a rubberstamp judiciary that shamelessly succumbs and heartlessly carves in to the whims and caprices of the executive or legislature leaving the ordinary masses at the mercy of an impotent, spineless, useless and worthless judiciary are since gone.”
The Nimba youths added: “The epoch of a branch of the Liberian Government measuring its strength and power by members of the judiciary trembling like wet chickens when the powerful in the other branch appears are in our sad past. The days when checks and balances in the governmental construct were sterile rhetoric with “so say one so say all” in full practice, where our country was battered, shattered and saddled with all elements of antidemocratic tenants and unfortunately had our motherland struggling under the rusty, dusty and ugly heels of intimation, molestation, tyranny and dictatorship of any branch of the government over another or the population must never be allowed to reappear on our political landscape any longer.”
The organization averred that for members of the House of Representatives of the 54th Legislature or some of its members under some known influences to feel that it can unfortunately lord over the removal of a sitting Associate Justice of the high court, speaks volumes.
“This must stop and now it must stop. We can never envisage and we will not tolerate any attempt by any Branch of the Liberian Government to transform any member on the Bench of the Supreme Court into sufficiently softened, well intimidated and completely malleable puppet of the Executive and Legislature Branches. This country is a country of law and not of powerful men who will relish “rule by law” and not “rule of law”. Under the Liberian democratic form of governance where rule of law must- and we mean must -be practiced, Associate Justice Ja’neh has not done any wrong to warrant impeachment as being trumpeted and parroted around here. We from Nimba County are aware of what warrants acts that can subject any Chief Justice, Associate Justices and judges of subordinated court of records to impeachment.
What warrants Impeachment?
FENYSO wants to make it plentifully clear that we know what warrants impeachable acts under the Liberian Constitution that must not be violated and manipulated.
Article 71 of the Liberian Constitution of 1986, among other things, says that the Chief Justice, Associate Justices and judges of subordinated court of records “may be removed upon impeachment and conviction by the legislature based on proved misconduct, gross breach of duty, inability to perform the function of the office, or conviction in a court of law for treasons, bribery, or other infamous crimes”.
Quite unequivocally, Justice Ja’neh has committed none of the acts mentioned is this article of the Liberian Constitution to be subjected to impeachment. Our Constitution fortunately did not leave room for evil minded actors to connive and remove from office those they see as “not taking instruction from them”. In the first place, no Chief Justice, Associate Justices and judges of subordinate court of records should be a yes-man to another member or branch of the government. They are expected to be men and women of virtue, value and principles who are yes-men to the Law of the Land and nothing less or more.
What is not Permissible under the Law?
Thankfully, this country is a country of law and not of powerful men who want to use their influence and affluence to do as they wish and not what the law says. Article 73 of our organic law, the Liberian Constitution, asserts that: “No judicial official shall be summoned, arrested, detained, prosecuted, or tried civilly or criminally by or at the instance of any person or authority on account of judicial opinions rendered or expressed, judicial statements made and judicial acts done in the course of a trial in open court or in chambers, except for treason or other felonies, misdemeanor or breach of peace. Statements made and acts done by such judicial officials in the course of a judicial proceeding shall be privileged, and subject to the above qualification. No such statements made or acts done shall be permissible into evidence against them at any trial or proceeding”.
We are yet to see anything in the Constitution and the laws of Liberia that qualifies Justice Ja’neh for impeachment. Impeachment can only lie in ‘the imaginary incompetent court of politicization or politics’ wrapped in the disproportionate desire by a few under the curse of evil politics to remove an independent Justice Ja’neh that we are so proud of and send sadly sufficient fear in the spine of the rest of the Justices as being vulnerable to removal and so they must comply or they complain from being ejected at the appearance of any signal and semblance of independence.
The inconceivable in the current case
In the case for which some members of the House of Representatives demand the impeachment of Justice Ja’neh, the opinions in the land case, the Code of Conduct and the ECOBANK cases, the Supreme Court unanimously expressed opinions that involved all on the Bench of the Supreme Court. Why now Justice Ja’neh alone should be singled out for impeachment? Why not the entire Bench if the opinions expressed by the Bench is worth impeachment?
The act of singling out Justice Ja’neh for undeserved punishment or impeachment for an opinion expressed by the Full Bench of the Supreme Court is unthinkable and unimaginable in this day and age of our national existence.
It is only under the influence of politics but not legality that such situation can be possible.
Conclusion
Our expectation of Associate Justice Ja’neh is not for him to allow this antidemocratic and illegal intimidation tactics to pitifully coin him into an emasculated Associate Justice who the cold and nasty hands of fear have castrated of the required fortitude to dispense justice fairly and impartially no matter who gets hurt or affected. Our expectation is not for the Bench of the Supreme Court to be populated with men and women who form a cavalcade of scaredy-cats who are cowed into submission to the unreasonable desires and dictates of the undemocratic political arrangement enveloped in the excessive longing to render men of virtues and values impotent so as the have control and abuse power.