Monrovia – Montserrado County District #9 residents are accusing Representative Muna Pelham Young-blood of reducing the District Representative office to a mere “protocol office.”
Report by Henry Karmo, [email protected]
According to them, she has abandoned all the developmental projects she promised during the 2017 Presidential and Representative elections.
Cyrus Mongar, a resident of the Matadi Community, told FPA that since Rep. Young-blood was reelected, she hasn’t taken a day to go back to hold community or district meeting in which development and issues affecting our district will be discussed.
“We don’t know what has happened to our lawmaker all we see is our lawmaker acting like one protocol officer behind the President.
“We are not against her ambition to work as a Protocol officer for President [George Manneh] Weah.”
“I think if she is not interested in representing our interests, she should do the honorable thing to resign and give the district a chance to elect another person.”
In an interview with this newspaper, other residents like Mongar, expressed disappointments in the actions of their lawmaker, who they accused of abandoning her function as a lawmaker with responsibility to provide representation, oversight and lawmaking.
Records from the House of Representatives’ Secretariat show that the district #9, lawmaker has been to session only two times since early January 2018.
According to the record, Representative Pelham Young-blood has missed more than six sessions without genuine excuses.
Of recent the district lawmaker has been in the media for abandoning her work as a lawmaker and functioning more like a protocol officer to the President.
She has travelled on all of President Weah’s foreign trips.
Unconfirmed sources also hinted FrontPageAfrica that Rep. Young-blood had earlier contemplated on resigning as lawmaker to take on the post of Chief of Protocol at the Executive Mansion but the President rejected the proposal.
In 2011 residents of Montserrado County District #9 chose Rep. Youngblood over the likes of Dr Ketekumeh Murray, who was then their siting lawmaker in the 52nd Legislature.
They saw her as that person who would represent their interests in the Legislature.
During her campaign, the lawmaker made many promises of what she would have done if elected many of which she is yet to accomplished.
She did begin some of them, which she didn’t complete before her tenure ended.
Some of the projects include construction of a town hall, construction of the bridge that would connect new Matadi to the 12th Street Community.
Some have opined that because of her failure to live up to the promises she had made, getting re-election was difficult.
“She had a challenge of convincing people again why they should trust her with another six-year tenure to be their lawmaker.
Besides failed promises, Rep Youngblood had to neutralize the formidable force from Forbi Henries, a contestant who tried to capitalize on her weaknesses and failures in a tense electoral process,” one of her critics said.
However, the people of the district still voted her to represent them in spite of all the odds.
Some of her critics attribute her second term mandate to her closeness to her Political Godfather, President Weah.
She is their representative for the next six years if nothing untoward happens.