Former Finance and Development Planning Minister Samuel Tweah has weighed in on the ongoing leadership conflict in the Liberian House of Representatives, underlining the urgency for adherence to constitutional law amidst a mounting legislative crisis.
President Boakai, caught in a whirlwind of political pressures, faces a critical decision: how to navigate the budgetary process without transgressing legal boundaries.
“The first breach of law would occur if a constitutionally elected President were to pass a national budget lacking the necessary approval from a sitting Speaker,” Tweah said Wednesday, referring to the current appropriation dilemma exacerbated by the dispute over Speaker Fonati Koffa’s authority.
With the legitimacy of the anticipated budget under scrutiny, Tweah urges the President to adhere strictly to constitutional mandates. Any deviation could tarnish his legacy as the first President to submit an illegal budget, bringing unwanted scrutiny and international disapproval.
He writes: The Liberian civil war was waged to place the country under the ‘rule of law’ and away from the ‘rule of men,’ whose whims, caprices and interests effectively became the law of the land. More than 250,000 Liberians paid in blood the price to inaugurate the now celebrated dawn of the rule of law in post-war Liberia. No political crisis or conflict, no matter how entrenched or pervasive, can move Liberia back to the pernicious ‘will of men.’
Presidents Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and George Manneh Weah have both sustained this entrenchment of the rule of law for 18 years after the signing of the Accra Peace Accord. Doubtless there have been impassioned political skirmishes and protests as expected in a democracy: but none of these has ever threatened the rudimentary sanctity of the rule of law and our constitutional democracy since the end of conflict.
The first such breach would occur if a constitutionally elected President were to attempt to pass and enforce a national budget that does not meet the constitutional threshold for passage, as in passing a budget without the imprimatur of a sitting Speaker who has not yet been constitutionally removed from office, as in the current legislative standoff. Such an action would provide a watershed benchmark in Liberia’s post conflict reconstitution of social order and would be of no small consequence.
I will not here delve into the magnitude of such consequences for our body politic but suffice it to say that passing a national budget illegally and attempting to enforce such a budget would be fraught with political, social and economic repercussions.
For these reasons , I cannot see President Joseph N. Boakai openly breaking the law and submitting the budget for non-constitutional passage. I do understand the political pressure the President is under not to betray his party in the current standoff.
But I equally know that President Boakai knows he was elected not to do the bidding of his party but that of his country: in short, to uphold the rule of law. In fact, the President swore an oath to uphold the law and I have no doubt the burden of that oath is weighing on him in these turbulent legislative times.
It is one thing for the President to allow his ministers to take sides in the current standoff; it is quite another for him to be regarded and reputed as the first President to pass an ‘illegal budget’ and to face the repercussions of this action. Say whatever you may say about President Boakai, I cannot see him going that far.
I also cannot see the Chief Justice approving staff of the judiciary attending budget hearings that are deemed ‘illegal,’ when the last Supreme Court ruling opined that the authority of the Speaker in these matters is constitutional and incontestable.
In fact drawing on the judicial doctrine of ‘stare decisis,’ in which courts are somewhat bound by their previous ruling, one can see where the Supreme Court may sway if they were to decide this matter.
In a similar vein, I cannot see the Minister of Finance and Development Planning agreeing to pass an ‘illegal budget,’ a national instrument that would have to be used by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Union, the African Development Bank, the United States Aid for International Development, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and several other partners, all of whom impose upon Liberia significant and exacting requirements of good governance and the rule of law.
How will the Boards of the IMF and the World Bank, for example, accept a budget with the stigma of ‘illegality’ when the deliberations and decisions at those very boards are largely about governance and the strictures of the rule of law in member countries?
The President and the Minister of Finance understand the gravity of these issues so I wager they would opt for a settlement that keeps the country’s legal and democratic norms intact.
This means that all sides to the current legislative impasse must brace for a constitutional settlement.
No one can compel dissenting and rebelling lawmakers in their majority to accept a Speaker they do not want. Refusing to sit under his gavel as a political tactic to coerce resignation is also acceptable in the confines of political or legislative disputation. And there are recent precedents that support their action.
But even this rebelling majority would agree that it would be an arrogance of monstrous proportion to expect Liberians to accept as an additional tactic to force the Speaker Fonati KOFFA’s resignation, the breaking of the country’s laws and the repudiation of iits constitutional governance.
In the recent precedents involving Speaker Alex Tyler, President Sirleaf submitted the budget to the embattled Speaker. Our colleagues in the rebelling majority would have to limit their tactical maneuvering to the political theater; taking that maneuvering beyond this terrain into constitutional domains is a massive threat and disservice to country and even to the respective oaths they too swore to uphold.
Let us all, in our political fracas, division or factions do our utmost to uphold the law for which 250,000 of our compatriots paid dearly with their lives.
It is in their cherished honor that I believe Liberia will emerge democratically and constitutionally stronger from the current legislative impasse!
