Monrovia – Is the formation of an interim government in the cards for Liberia? The long lines of allegations of elections irregularities appear to be increasing the odds as the Supreme Court deliberates on a filing by the opposition Liberty Party this week.
Report by Rodney D. Sieh, [email protected]
“This is the plan of the ongoing legal approach by the ruling party aimed at pushing the electoral process beyond the limits.
“They have planned it out. Once the Supreme Court issues the writ they will call for dissolution of the NEC and whole new elections and interim government after January 2018 because it will take at least a year for a new process to go into effect” – A Gov’t Source, speaking on condition of anonymity
Atty. Darryl Ambrose Nmah, Public Relations Officer for the Supreme Court confirmed to FrontPageAfrica at the weekend that the petition by the party has been filed.
Said Nmah: “The petition was filed before the Chamber Justice, Kabineh M. Ja’neh. This being an election matter, it has to be determined by the full bench and the bench did not sit on Friday so no action has been taken on the petition until Tuesday when the bench sits.”
Two Options for High Court
Legal experts say there are a couple of options available to the court: Halt the elections based on the evidence provided by the Liberty Party or nullify the elections after it is held and if Liberty Party wins its arguments. The National Elections has 30 days to rule in a separate filing by the opposition LP which is why the party also took its fight to the high court.
The saga took an unprecedented turn at the weekend when the ruling Unity Party joined the opposition LP with an intervention on the matter in a complaint titled “Intervention” in the Liberty Party Case in which it cited the late Opening of Polls and the denial of thousands of Liberians from exercising their voting rights.
The LP complaint noted: “Late opening of some Polls, without ensuring that late opening Polls remained opened for at least 10 hours, as required by law, with sufficient lighting and adequate security, deprived voters who were registered at such Polling Places of equal protection under the law, in addition to depriving them of the right to vote and exposing the polling places to the the danger of vote fixing.”
The Party is also taking issue with late change of polling stations. “Pursuant to Articles 77(b) and 80(c) of the Constitution, Section 4.2(1) of the enabling Elections Law, as amended, and Article 4.3 of the enabling Regulation on Polling and Counting provides that a location of a Polling Place may be changed by the NEC, if it determines that same is necessary, but the NEC is required to notify the voters and post signs showing the new location at least a week before polling, emergency excepted.”
Complainants aver that on the day of election, with no emergency, voters discovered that some Polling Places were not at the locations that had been previously published by the NEC, thus depriving them of their constitutional right to vote.
One of such examples is the location of a Polling Place in Precinct Center #6171, District# 7, Fuama, Bong County, which was changed, without the required notice, from Korniekawoejai to Camp America, about six-hour walk, resulting in many not voting, thus depriving such voters of the constitutional right to vote.
Complainants request the NEC to take judicial notice of the number of voters at that particular precinct to determine how many persons of that precinct were deprived of the right to vote as well as many others who, not entitled to vote, may have been allowed to vote since at such center the requisite observers could not be present.
Notice is given that Affidavits in support of these assertions, and others, shall be provided during the hearing.
Additionally, the opposition party is taking issue with the Voters Registration List(VSL). “The NEC is both constitutionally and statutorily obliged to maintain an accurate Voters Registration List, at each Polling Place, of those registered at such voter registration center, to expedite the voting process, ensuring that votes counted from every Polling Place are votes of only legitimate voters, and that the results thereof reflect the aspirations of only those who were registered, and who voted at the Polling Place. Complainants hereby give notice that during the hearing it will produce copies of Affidavits and Voter Registration Cards of individuals who were not allowed to vote because their names were not on the Final Registration Roll (FRR).”
The complaint accuses the elections commission of not implementing the rules regarding the VSL. “Many voters arrived at the Polling Places, where they had registered, only to be told that they were not eligible to vote because their names were not on the FFR, thus depriving such voters of their constitutional right to vote.”
One of those voters was Stanley Carter, Liberty Party Representative for District #1, Sinoe County, who was told by the Presiding Officer that he could not vote because his name was not on the FRR.
“It was only after he requested the Presiding Officer to look of the ballot paper, carrying his name and photo, was he allowed to vote. Many voters who were similarly situated and who were disenfranchised because their names were not on the FRR, will never be known under the circumstances.”
Liberia’s Stability Under Threat
Despite cases of obvious election-day issues, many legal and political observers fear the ongoing impasse has the potential to threaten Liberia’s post-war stability.
The first round of the elections produced a strong lead for Senator George Manneh Weah who topped the field of 20 candidates with 38.4% while the ruling party’s Joseph Boakai finished with 28.8%.
Third place Charles Brumskine was nearly 20% further back on 9.6%, having had only one quarter of Weah’s vote and one third of Boakai’s vote.
Senator Prince Y. Johnson of the Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction, MDR received a total of 127, 666 votes, constituting 8.2 percent, while Alexander B. Cummings of the Alternative National Congress, ANC obtained a total of 112, 067 votes amounting to 7.2 percent of the total votes cast on October 10, 2017.
Mimicking Kenya
The Liberian situation is already drawing comparison to the recent elections in Kenya where Raila Odinga pulled out of the repeat election after the result of the August election had been annulled by the courts, saying that the contest against incumbent President Kenyatta was not going to be fair. He had officially won 44.7 percent of the vote then, with an overall turnout of almost 80 percent.
A repeat election faced challenges, when an activist filed a case seeking to nullify the election 24 hours after vote. For the repeat vote, Odinga called for a boycott on the grounds that the electoral commission had not made sufficient changes to ensure a free and fair vote. It would appear that his call was widely observed due to the record low turnout.
But some diplomatic observers are refusing to draw the Kenya comparison, saying that the Liberia situation is clearly different from Kenya where Uhuru Kenyatta had already exceeded 55% and meant there was no second round, thereby creating the need for a re-run.
In the case of Liberia, some argue, a rerun may be unnecessary because one is already in the cards, a run-off election between the two candidates that were undeniably in first and second place.
The immediate reaction from the range of international observers was to express their overall satisfaction with the elections.
Despite numerous issues of irregularities both the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the European Union Election Observation Mission have said the election was ‘peaceful’ and ‘generally well-conducted’ The European Union Election Observation Mission stated that ‘overall conduct of the voting was generally assessed as either good or very good’
The head of the AU observers group, Erastus Mwencha, went a step further to state that Liberia is proving to the world that she is properly nurturing her emerging democracy. ‘Politically we see that there is calm and the nation is at peace with itself.’
George Weah not only had the most votes in Montserrado, he led in eleven of the fifteen counties. Supporters of Weah charge that Boakai, realising that he cannot overhaul George Weah’s lead is opting for the route of the court in hopes of overturning the first-round results.
The alarms of election irregularities by the ruling party is reminiscent of the 2011 presidential elections when the opposition Congress for Democratic Change raised contentions about the results and threatened to boycott after the incumbent Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won the first round with 43.9% of the vote, followed by CDC candidate Winston Tubman with 32.7%.
Under the Liberian constitution, once no candidate received an absolute majority, the candidates with the two highest totals faceoff in a runoff ballot.
In 2011, the CDC, took a lukewarm posture to the second-round runoff after Tubman alleged that the first round had been rigged in Sirleaf’s favor and called on his supporters to boycott the run-off.
Supreme Court Justices out of Country
For now, the complaint of the opposition LP is being complicated by the absence of some of the justices. As of Sunday, FrontPageAfrica could only confirm the presence in the county of Associate Justice Kabineh M. Ja’neh and Phillip A.Z. Banks III.
The Chief Justice Francis Korkpor, Associate Justices Jamesetta Howard Wolokollie and Sie-A-Nyene Gyapay Yuoh are said to be out of the country.
A 3-2 vote on the bench could likely put the electoral process into a rerun. Tuesday’s vote may either bring some closure to the impasse or prolong it further.
The Chief Justice and the Associate Justices have equal votes to reach a decision. In case of tied votes, the Chief Justice who, as a matter of course, is the last vote shall cast the decisive vote and the votes of the majority sitting and voting shall be binding on the court.
If the court rules against LP it is unlikely that a new round of voting will be on the cards.
Transition Bill vs. Interim Govt. Fears
Besides the lingering legal wrangle, is a bill currently making the rounds in the national legislature referred to as the Act seeking clarification on the Powers and Authority of the National Elections Commission with Respect to the Qualifications of Political Parties and Organizations and Independent Candidates for the Ensuing Election(s), Determination of Election Results and Determination of Election Disputes.
The draft bill reaffirms provisions of the Constitution and the Elections Law, that the NEC is the sole determinant of the qualification of political parties and political organizations and independent candidates for elections and the sole determinant of election results and election disputes, “except that the right of appeal is reserved to an interested party aggrieved by a decision of the National Elections Commission to appeal to the Supreme Court for review.”
The draft bill allows at least 5 days filing a complaint with the NEC, while a period of 15 days is provided for the NEC to review its decision after a petition has been filed.
The draft bill also provides for “30 days to file an appeal within which a decision shall be made by the Supreme Court on all appeals to it; otherwise, the decision of the NEC shall be final, binding, and legally enforceable.”
Further, the amended Act provides that “appeals to the Supreme Court shall not serve as a stay of decisions of the National Elections Commission, but that the NEC’s decisions shall be enforced pending the results of appeals from the Supreme Court.”
This is particularly crucial in the current scenario where the LP has filed with both the elections commission and the Supreme Court.
Interestingly the sponsor of the act is Cllr. Varney Sherman, a former chair of the ruling party who has a long-running feud with President Sirleaf.
Cllr. Sherman has previously explained that his basis for pushing the legislation is to avert future recurrence of the 2014 Special Senatorial Election episode, when five Senators suffered several months delay taking their seats after aggrieved candidates took their complaints to the Supreme Court. Senators Sherman, Gbleh-bo Brown of Maryland; Morris Saytumah of Bomi; Jim Tornolah of Margibi; and Conmany Wesseh of River Gee counties later took their respective seats.
The act has been passed in the Senate but is currently lingering in the corridors of the lower house awaiting passage.
The fear in most diplomatic and political circles at the weekend is: How will this all play out and whether it could lead to the formation of an interim government?
Sources within the government fear that this is the ultimate end game for the Unity Party, already struggling financially to go into a second-round vote.
‘All Planned Out’
Said the source: “This is the plan of the ongoing legal approach by the ruling party aimed at pushing the electoral process beyond the limits.
“They have planned it out. Once the Supreme Court issues the writ they will call for dissolution of the NEC and whole new elections and interim government after January 2018 because it will take at least a year for a new process to go into effect.”
A sign of this was evident Sunday when the ruling party Chair, Paye accused President Sirleaf of manipulating the electoral process and called for the dissolution of the elections commission.
“The president’s conduct was an act of intimidation and inducement, especially since some commissioners of the National Elections Commission had warned Chairman Jerome Kokorya against Election Magistrates meeting President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Those commissioners were correct that because there was no precedent for it anywhere, that meeting was not necessary at all.”
Mr. Paye added. “If the president had any legitimate “concerns” about this year’s elections, she needed to have made those concerns public and not to the magistrates, who are way below the administrative and legal institutional channels. Chairman Kokorya cannot continue to receive instructions from President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.”
Mr. Paye recalled that prior to the President’s meeting with Election Magistrates; she had met with some Commissioners of NEC and hinted that she was “interested in the outcome of the elections”. Of course, as an individual Liberian citizen she was entitled to her view of which candidate to support, canvass or vote for.”
After more than a decade of civil war, Liberia is still on course to completing a successful transition from war to peace, with these elections marking the first time in 73 years that political power will be handed over peacefully, and democratically, from one elected leader to another.
It is a feat Sirleaf trumpeted when she addressed the 72nd General Assembly of the United Nations. “The election will signal the irreversible course that Liberia has embarked upon to consolidate its young, post-conflict democracy. Indeed, democracy is on the march in Liberia and, I believe, on an irreversible path forward on the African continent.”
The events of the past few days however suggest that the path envisioned by Sirleaf may likely be derailed by unforeseen political instability looming on the horizon of a post-war nation, within striking distance of a major transition of power.
