The National Campaign Management Team of Julius Kanubah and Beatrice Sieh for the Leadership of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) remains constructively engaged to ongoing efforts aimed at finding a credibly meaningful solution for the restoration of institutional leadership stability at the PUL.
As part of this constructive engagement, Team Kanubah–Sieh is committed to the mediation initiated since November 2023 by a Group of Former Leaders of the PUL convened under the moral guardianship of PUL former President Peter Quaqua, and headed by James C. Dennis, Jr., an original Founding Member and former President of the PUL, who is aged, 96.
In the face of this mediation, Team Kanubah–Sieh wishes to state for the record that while it has been fully cooperating with the Group of Former Leaders, Daniel Nyakonah and his Team exhibited an attitude of noncompliance at the crucial stage of the mediation, until their decision to back-off going forward.
Similar posture of noncompliance was displayed by Nyakonah and his Team during the June–July mediation by the USAID and Internews, where having collectively agreed to a rerun election for August 2023, Nyakonah along with his Team pulled out of the process, leading to the imposition of a sort of financial sanctions on the PUL by the American Government autonomous agency (USAID).
Moreover, Nyakonah and his Team demonstrated noncompliance attitude in the October 2023 mediation by the Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas (ALJA), headed by Pewee Baysah, whom Nyakonah disrespected in a phone-call, by hanging–up on him.
The Former Leaders of the PUL who conducted an extensive but separate investigative hearing involving all contending sides in the PUL dispute were at the brink of announcing their findings and proposal for a way forward when Nyakonah and his Team refused to show-up on two occasions, putting up flimsy excuses.
Because it was and is plausible that the Group of Former Leaders would call for a rerun of election in the PUL considering the blatant fraud that characterized processes leading to the November 2022 Congress and subsequent unprecedented Mid-Night election, Nyakonah and his Team have now decided the face-saving escape route of backing-off, excluding their comrade–in–fraud Akoi Baysah.
Team Kanubah–Sieh describes as rather overdue the decision of Nyakonah to finally concede to vacating the PUL leadership, having illegally claimed to be vice president when his term of office expired in November 2022, and then as acting president since 12 July 2023, without any semblance of legitimacy.
Nyakonah was compelled to vacate the illegal power grab and to escape because he and his Team suffered severe legal blows at the Supreme Court and are being equally hammered at the Lower Court in Bong County.
Also, because both international and national partners of the PUL refused to do business with him and his Team until a credible election is held in the PUL based on the Constitution, Nyakonah and his Team have reckoned that they have no easier pathway going forward, but to back off, since some of their nefarious financial backers lost power in the just ended presidential and legislative election.
The Friday, February 23, 2024, pronouncement by Nyakonah and his Team demonstrates that they have got to finally reckon with the indisputable fact that no one who commits electoral fraud and acts of corruption at the PUL is spared from being fully held accountable through the rule of law.
Charles Coffey and Musa Kenneh experienced and suffered similar fate – a result of the unwavering push for accountability through the rule of law by the majority Membership of the PUL under the moral stewardship of the National Campaign Management Team of Kanubah–Sieh.
In this vein, and as the last left over fraudster impersonating as a leader of the PUL, Akoi Baysah must take note and immediately follow the path of his comrades–in–fraud by vacating any position he is claiming to be occupying in compliance with a December 2022 Court’s Stay Order, restraining him not to do any business in the name of the PUL.
Team Kanubah–Sieh again calls on relevant media stakeholders to do all to step in to chart a new direction for the PUL including settlement agreement regarding the legal processes for a fresh, credible and inclusive electoral process.
