THAT THE MINISTRY of Justice was requested by the Executive Mansion to interpret, if not to add spin, to the opinion of the Honorable Supreme Court in the case House Speaker Jonathan Fonati Koffia versus ‘Majority Bloc’ casts a huge doubt on the integrity of Liberia’s democracy; it clearly underscores the Joseph Boakai administration’s scheme to take Liberia back to the dark past of hegemonic rule and tyranny. If this is not jungle justice, if it is not desperation to protect power at all cost, if it is not akin to despotism, if it is not an invitation to uprising, one wonders what it best is.
IT CAN BE RECALLED that High Court issued its verdict in the aforementioned case – however widely considered to terse and unambiguous – but the contenting issues bordering law and Constitution as articulated by the Court was found just and right. Whatever that was, as in any democracy, the opinion expressed was to be final, unalterable and organic. But in Joseph Boakai’s ‘democracy’, that was not sufficient. The Court did not speak the language that the Boakai and his Unity Party likes to hear: falsification, entitlement, propaganda, and allergy to the facts as they are. So, the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs or the Government of Boakai – which is like that hunter with buffalos, elephants and several deer killed and hanging on him as a possession – still scrambled for a grasshopper for meat; it shamelessly authored an official communication in which it prayed to its Justice Minister to add the language the President would like to hear.
JUSTICE MINISTER OSWALD Tweh, that hitherto fine, respected lawyer but now demonstrably heavily compromised, went for the bid, and he did the kill. In a highly ridiculous and unpopular way, the Justice Minister chose to muddle justice, to add propagandistic spin and politicize the High Court opinion with his infamous line, “Your Honors’ Ruling and Final Judgment concluded that the sittings, actions and decisions of the Majority Bloc were lawful.” This is the same Justice Minister who contended that the Supreme Court needed to interfere into House debacle as it’s “political issue, and not legal issue” and that the Court should play down intervention.
A JUSTICE MINISTER under Charles G. Taylor regime, a regime deemed the most vicious in Liberia’s postwar democratic order, could have done better. Vladimir Putin’s justice minister could have done better than this heavily programmed Oswald Tweh. Because the last time we check the core functions of the Justice Ministry, even under dictatorship, they included being responsible to ensure that citizens live in freedom and have protection; that the constitutional rights of citizens are protected, and that the independence of the judiciary is ensured. But it appears so sad that the current Justice Minister, by virtue of his ill-interpretation of High Court opinion, has brought to this noble post the character of a propagandist and scammer in contrast to the lawyering attributes of humility, integrity, obsession for ethics and good code of practice. One wonders how this once reputable lawyer so soon has gotten drunk with the wine of “Boakaiholicism”—a strong sense of political bully and entitlement at the peril of rule of law.
SUCH A STRONG sense of entitlement, this inordinate obsession for power and authority, this egregious cruelty against opponents and dissent, as demonstrated by President Boakai to the extent of rendering the edicts of the Supreme Court ineffectual, has now reached notorious proportion, and it is time for all democratic forces to join hands in rejection. The Liberian public cannot depend on the Ministry of Justice.
IF AT THE onset of the Boakai regime, anyone had thought the president was merely posturing and proving to be a tough politician, they must have a rude awaking; for it now lays bare, clearly and evidently, that President Boakai wears all the features of autocracy, decimating democratic institutions, including the Supreme Court, intoxicating formerly pro-freedom advocates and rights crusaders and turning them into an axis of despots, there is a just cause for concern.
BY THE SINGULAR act of trying to bully the High Court into submission, to cripple the Legislature, to uproot tenured position, what else is left that the President and his adherents cannot do to take the country to tyranny? Is it not safe to one to surmise that the Boakai establishment cannot preside over free, fair and transparent elections? Is it not overly clear that this president and this Unity Party government are inclined not to cede power to an opposition if defeated in credible polls?
THE FUTURE OF this country spells doom, looking at these boldfaced anti-democratic shenanigans of the president and his party. And it is time for all democratic forces, both national, regional and international, to hold together against a creeping dictatorship. It could be late. A rejoinder by the Analyst Newspaper
