Monrovia-Jan-12-TNR: The election for speaker for the house of Representatives bis expected to take place on Monday, January 15, 2024 between Richard Koon and Jonathan Fonati Koffa.
Koon is the candidate for Unity Party (UP) while Koffa is candidate for Coalition for Democratic Change.
But sources close to Representative Koon of district number 11 are uncertain of him winning due to the low number of hissupporters. What is makes them to feel some level of uncertainty was the low turnout at the just ended meeting with president-elect, Hon. Joseph Boakai on Tuesday, January 9, 2024.
“I am saying this because out of 73 lawmakers, only 31 attended the meeting . The rest of the people were with Representative Koffa. Even those with us, we are not sure of their full commitment,” one lawmaker said on condition of anonymity.
Another lawmaker said, “we do not want to be an election that took place between Alex Tyler, former speaker and Richard Toweh in which Richard was certain of winning, even though he never had the numbers.”
The lawmaker said, at the meeting, they were confident of winning, but after careful discussions, they saw that they did not have the needed number to win.
At present, CDC candidate has 40, but his supporters said, they are 46 lawmakers, which makes UP lawmakers to be uncertain.
With this latest development, another source said that they have decided to inform the president Elect to appeal to Representative Koffa to retain his position and give Koon the way to go as speaker. That some concessions will be made, if that should happen.
“Seeing the level of low support for Koon, we asked the oldmanto appeal to Hon. Koffa to retain his position and give way to Koon. But this will be difficult from what we were told late this evening.
Hoever, when this paper contacted Hon. Koffa for comment, there was no response. This was followed by a text message and again no response.
But one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting said on his social media page that his meeting was not in support of Koon. Rather, he had gone to seek ways with the president-elect to support his development agenda.
Jacob C. Debee said on his page that “I was part of 31 lawmakers who met the President and Vice President-elect yesterday not necessarily to pledge support to his candidate for the Speakership, but rather an opportunity or privilege to meet, congratulate and explain to him and team what we stand for as a district and county,” he said.
Interestingly, Koon, Koffa and Debee are from the South East. In the last administration of president George Weah, the Speaker and his Deputy came from the South East.
Debee said, “the President-elect reaffirmed his desire to grade all roads to standard in his first 100 days. He also promised to decentralize the distribution of medical supplies like building a regional hub of storage in one central county that will distribute assorted medical supplies. He promised to give US$5000 to each electoral district to celebrate his inauguration because he doesn’t want everyone coming to Monrovia for celebration. He revealed that the CDC government has made available US$650k for the inauguration program. However, he made specific mention about how the Southeasterners voted and that you don’t have to come from a particular part of Liberia to develop or build roads.”
Hon. Debee explained one his key reasons for attending the meeting: “I went on to ask him (President-elect and team) to give/let us know how much his government intends to raise in addition to what the outgoing government gave them for transparency and accountability but they fell short of that,” Rep. Debee among other things concluded.
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