By: Perry B. Zordyu Email: zordyuperryb@gmail.com
House Speaker, Dr. Bhofal Chambers has cried foul over provisional results of the just ended October Presidential and Legislative Elections accusing the Election Magistrate in Maryland County of malpractice.
In what has been described as the biggest shock and upset in the just concluded October 10, 2023 elections, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the 54th National Legislature, Dr. Bhofal Chamber has lost his bid to return to the that august body when he was surprisingly defeated by former student leader Anthony F. William.
The National Elections Commission (NEC) eventually announced Anthony Williams of obtaining 8,158 votes while Speaker Chambers who was seeking a fourth term consecutively since 2005 got 8,122, a slight margin of 36 votes in Sodoken-Pleebo District, Maryland County.
The defeat of Speaker Chambers has thus far punctuated a colorful history of legislative politics in the county as he has been in the National Legislature for a record 18 years serving sixof those years as Speaker of the 54th National Legislature.
Political pundits believed that Speaker Chambers’s frantic efforts to retain his current position in the next dispensation and his reelection was just a matter of formality since he was very sure of returning without much hurdle as in the past.
Having survived some of the toughest challenges in the past, Chambers did not see this shock coming and if it was ever a bet placed on the game, many, including himself would have waved it off.
It is something he will not easily fathom in the days to come and could now be hanging his political future to a win for President George Manneh Weah’s re-election to seek a cover as he re–strategizes and rebrands his future pursuit.
Critics believed his tenure as Speaker is a far cry from what he professed to have stood for when he was in the opposition but has been characterized by greed and manipulated under President Weah which now affects his reelection.
Anthony Williams who is a former student leader and an activist based his campaign on giving back the Sodoken-Pleebo District to the people and making the people decide their future without any political interference.
Driven by many young people, majority of whom are students and unemployed youths, Williams’ campaign gained much more attraction with the way he promised to lead as a lawmaker, highlighting the failure of Chambers and what he hoped to do differently to address the level of under-development and neglect in the district.
Besides Chambers, Montserrado County District #7 Representative from the ruling establishment, Solomon George also lost to Emmanuel Dahn and tough-talking Moses Acarous Gray and Isaac Roland Blalu from the ruling CDC may not return to the National Legislature Parliament in 2024 January based on the preliminary results given by the National Elections Commission (NEC).
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