As Diplomatic Corps Cannot Be Frontline Actors In Liberian Battles
PHOTO: Amb. Beny’yela A. Gang addressing the LNBA Assembly
By Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.com
Monrovia- Cameroon’s Ambassador to Liberia, Beny’yela A. Gang has noted that tension brewing and escalating with each passing day in Liberia, as the October 10 presidential and legislative elections approach and he wants Liberians to ease tensions.
President George Manneh Weah is seeking a second term election bid, while all of the 73 Representatives seats are up for grabs along with half of the 30-member Senate seats.
“And so, I agree that all wise Liberians and more so, the legal and Judicial family, must fully assume and highlight their inescapable prime role and obligations to give serenity to the nation during the emotion parked elections on the horizon, Amb. Gang said.
The Cameroonian diplomat was speaking at Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Ministerial Complex at the weekend in a jam packed hall of lawyers and some members of the diplomatic missions who had gathered to observe the ongoing Liberian National Bar Association (LNBA) Assembly in Monrovia’s Congo Town suburb. The forum is due to end on Saturday, April 1, 2023.
It was the same Congo Town suburb in Montserrado County District #10 that saw an upsurge of violence last week between supporters of the ruling CDC and supporters of the incumbent Representative Yekeh Kolubah of the opposition CPP>
The LNBA Assembly is being held under the Theme: Beyond Rhetoric and Impunity, Law, Governance and the 2023-Election- The Basis for Democratic Necessity in Liberia.
In his statement, Amb. Gang said that the theme Beyond Rhetoric and Impunity, is a theme that admonishes everyone but the political stakeholders, primarily to demonstrate with urgency, maturity and patriotic love for country, an awareness of the destructive capacity of the flamboyant, pugilistic, self-serving rhetoric from tongues and pens that can easily act as flame throwers.
The Cameroonian diplomat said he is among those who do not any longer consider Liberia as a fragile state, adding that “the war years are long gone behind us.”
According to him, Liberia has proudly experienced years of peace, longer than several countries on our continent.
“I see the scourge of dangerous rhetoric at two levels: firstly, the bellicose, defiant, partisan, rhetoric prevailing in some fringes of the media. The same inflammatory strategies are observable among too many political opinion leaders and regrettably, such leaders with impunity, threaten by their choice of words to nullify Liberia’s enormous achievements in the area of post war socio political and economic healing” he added.
“Let state this emphatically: members of the Diplomatic corps cannot be frontline actors in Liberian battles even as the next elections catalyze these worrisome tensions and we amicable discourage the unhealthy quest for electoral victors, seek to represent.”
Ambassador Gang said, people from abroad “can only stand in solidarity with Liberia only strongly counsel patriotic self-restraint and we of course and again as friends, must ring the alarm bells in the ears of offenders about the long term personal responsibilities and dangers to which they exposed themselves nationally and globally.”
At the second level, the Cameroonian envoy said they can also see the dangers of institutional rhetoric without action and of impunity.
“This is among those political, associative legal or administrative institutions charged with the duty of monitoring of dissuading and of repressing partisans suspected of mob incitement. Of course one must sympathize with the social pressures on the shoulders of all enforcers in such closely knit societies as we find in Liberia and indeed, in most of Africa it is never easy to punish kith or kin.”
However, Amb. Gang then went on to say that laws are enacted to be enforced.
“Duty is duty and leaders win political and judicial office with an avowed commitment under oath to govern society to defend the public interest and to equitably guarantee security for the people and the nation,”
Amb. Gang added.
He further said that an election year is a good reason when the diverse political and opinions leaders whatever be their coloration, the National Elections Commission, the Judicial authorities, the police and security guarantors of national stability cannot but show spine leadership, commitment and purposefulness in their full.
The Cameroonian Ambassador has called for an unbiased enforcement of the rule of law, something he said the LNBA stands alert in its auxiliary, legal role as both an active friend of all parties and citizens as well as a bona fide amicus Curiae of the Supreme Court.
He wants the rise of lawlessness to be urgently stopped in its tracks and said that the law must be enforce and called for an end to impunity.
Meanwhile, Cameroon Ambassador Gang has urged what he called the “good and pacificators and genuine statesmen to continue to stand tall and to supersede any inciters whoever as Liberia heads towards the delicate final six months of the 2023 electoral season.”