By William Selmah, wselmah@gmail.com
He was speaking in an exclusive interview as live studio guest WEEKEND FILE radio magazine show on Capitol FM 89.7 produced by the Public Trust Media Group (PTMG) www.newspublictrust.com in Monrovia last Saturday evening.
Jusitce Jan’neh said he won his recent case against the Liberian government because the ECOWAS Court had evidence that his removal was wrongful and politically motivated.
On November 10, 2020, the ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja, Nigeria “ordered the Republic of Liberia to pay Counsellor Kabineh Muhammad Jan’neh, an impeached Judge of the Supreme Court of Liberia, the sum USD200, 000 ( two hundred thousand dollars) as reparation for moral prejudice suffered for the violation of his rights.”.
Justice Jan’neh minced no words in expressing what he sees as the ineptitude of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia, Francis Korkpor to preside over the country’s high court.
“This is what I see as the character of a man who is unfit to be Chief Justice. Mr. Korkpor can no longer be a Chief Justice for me,” he told the show’s host Frank Sainworla.
In the verdict, the ECOWAS Court ordered the government of Liberia to also reinstate him as well.
Justice Jan’neh said that compensation was not the foundation of their legal battle, “but about saving the profession and career of a man”.
The former Liberian Associate Justice said in terms of its further determination, the ECOWAS Court’s ruling is a triumph for the independence of the judiciary.
Penalized for dissenting opinion in 2017 elections case
He explained that people who hold judicial offices are “protected under the law, and in the words of the President of the ECOWAS Court, insulated from the whims and caprices of political actors so that to dispense justice as they deem it fit. Judges are protected under the law in order to give them independence to dispense justice as they deem it fit consistent with law.”
He emphasized that his removal was politically motivated. “When you look at that entire proceeding from the day the CDC lawmakers decided to proceed, with the impeachment at the level of the House of Representatives, one could really see what the motivations were.”
He believes part of those motivations relate to a dissenting position he took in the 2017 election case involving the incoming ruling party, CDC and some opposition parties led by the late Cllr. Charles Brumskine’s Liberty Party in he (Jan’neh) gave a dissenting Opinion.
“So they could not express that in the language they put forth as basis for the impeachment proceeding. They only said this was a political proceeding, and everybody knows that it was only because Kabineh Ja’neh dissented in the elections case,” the former Associate Justice said.
Executive masterminded his impeachment
According to the impeached Justice, the brain behind the entire plot was the Executive branch of government, but that “it was a combination of efforts triggered from one area with the complicity of the rest. I will think that there were people in both houses closely motivated by the executive with a tacit complicity of the judiciary especially at the highest level”.
Asked as to whether he would opt to be reinstated as the ruling of the ECOWAS Court orders, Justice Jan’neh said he can no longer sit on a Supreme Court bench presided over by Chief Justice Francis Korkpor, owing to what he sees as his (Korkpor’s) ineptitude.
“By his conduct, he no longer remains in my mind fit to preside over the Supreme Court because of the indignity he has brought to the court. Francis Korpor was the instrument used to remove me and that’s what I feel personally.”
The impeached member of the Supreme Court bench asserted that he finds it hard to discern how after the Supreme Court ordered the House of Representatives to freeze their impeachment and that order was flagrantly disobeyed, the same Supreme Court could preside over the same proceeding at the request of the very House that disrespected the Court.
“That order was not just flagrantly disobeyed, but the response with a threat to the court from the HOR in a letter under the signature of the clerk of the HOR in which they say ‘you will withdraw your instruction in order to save yourself from embarrassment from us’. Everything we worked for under the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration has been thrashed by Francis Korkpor,” he told www.newspublictrust.com .
He believes Chief Justice Korkpor was probably afraid of being impeached himself, something he terms as the mark of an incompetent person.
The ECOWAS Court in its ruling disagreed with Justice Ja’neh in his assertion that Chief Justice Korkpor exhibited biases in the conduct of the impeachment proceeding.
Said the head of the ECOWAS Court, Justice Edward Amoako Asante said in his ruling on November 10: “The Applicant’s allegation of bias against the Chief Justice of Liberia, who presided over the impeachment trial at the Liberian Senate was however, dismissed by the Court as unstainable.”