Liberia News: 43 Lawmakers To Vacate Hotel?

Liberia-The forty-three members of the House of Representatives who have been camping at the RLJ Hotel over the past three weeks, as part of their remonstrance and determination to unseat The Speaker of the House, Cllr. J. Fornati Koffa are reportedly making preparations to take their leave due to several factors.

Since signing a Resolution in October to remove Speaker Koffa who they elected in January in keeping with constitutional requirements, the 43 lawmakers who refer to themselves as Majority Bloc, have been  staying together at the  Hotel, to enable them hold together and evade external pressures.

But reports reaching this paper say they are considering leaving the Hotel owing to the fact that sources of funding are running steadily dry, while families of some of them are  expressing concerns over  the prolong stay at the hotel.

“Some of them are using that time to take their girlfriends with them there. If you want to remove  the speaker, you can stay  home to remove him, but not to go and live in hotel,” a source close to a  lawmaker family member told this paper.

The concerned family members, according to our information, are unhappily uneasy with their husbands abandoning the homes since the upheaval to remove the Speaker started last month.

The lawmakers who many refer to as ‘renegade lawmakers’ have since refused to sit under the authority and gavel of the under-pressure Speaker turned their backs to the main chambers of the House, and are holding separate legislative proceedings in the Joint Chambers of the Legislature and residing at the hotel.

The Speaker’s  removal saga has witnessed so many dramas, including defections, near-fist fight, exchange of vulgarities, and compounded by allegations of bribery that each of them received $15,000 in advance of a whooping $25,000 dollars said to have been promised them as inducement to unseat the Speaker.

It has been also alleged that the 43 lawmakers  have reportedly spent the sum of over US$2 million in their quest to have the Speaker ousted. They have denied these allegations.

The funding which is said to be provided by the Executive branch of the Liberian government, although they have since denied any connection to the situation, even-though it is doing business with the breakaway group.

Sources at the hotel declined to give details of the lawmakers on grounds that it was against their ethics.

However, a source close to the hotel said, they have heard some family members in the lobby of the hotel that it was time for them to return to their respective homes.

“I overheard some of them saying that they will be going home soon. They are missing their families.

To verify the story, some lawmakers residing there were called but there was no response.

Wilson