7 July 2009
The Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released a final report last week that stood up 98% for justice. Anti-prosecutionists brand it "the justice advocate report that throws caution in the wind".
At least one civil society group that favors the setting up of a war crimes court says the report did not go far enough to recommend an immediate purge of the current government of Liberia. The Commission has no comment, or at least reserves comment for now - but it seems to be playing the indifferent observer.
That, however, is not stopping the punches from coming from disappointed Liberians. Now hardliner politicians are stepping onto the scene, crying foul and brandishing evidence of impropriety. One of them is Milton Teahjay of the UPP and now CDC fame. The Analyst, reports.
CDC policy advisor J. Milton Teahjay has described the final report of the TRC as having the appearance of a campaign for political witch hunt. He is therefore calling for the establishment of a review committee to study its determinations and recommendations vis-à-vis their impacts on the peace process and the security and stability of Liberia.
The political hardliner and CDC political advisor made the assertions yesterday when he served as guest of the Truth FM Breakfast Talk Show. According to him the slant of the report showed all indications that some hidden hands were using the Commission as a venue to settle scores with political opponents.
"The constitutional and legal basis of the TRC Report remains to be clarified before it can be accepted by the Liberian people. Contrasted with existing laws, the report is in both constitutional and statutory violations," Teahjay said.
He said the report contravene article 97, sections A and B of the Liberian Constitution, which he said grants clemency to members of the defunct People's Redemption Council. In spite of the unambiguous protection granted the former PRC members, he said, the TRC report recommended the prosecution of former PRC member Albert Toe.
As further proof that the report cannot be accepted by the Liberian people because it deliberately flouted basic laws on which the peace process hangs, he said, the report violated the August 2003 Legislative Act, a peace guarantor actually, signed by former President Charles Taylor.
The Act, which he said has not been repealed, granted executive clemency to all belligerent forces and actors, except the INPFL, which were involved in the Liberian civil conflict between 1989 and 2003.
"He said in the face of these laws, the TRC Report cannot be implemented," he contended. He said while the flouting of the organic laws of Liberia was the sole undoing of the report, there were statistical questions regarding whether the opinions it expressed and the recommendations it made represented the majority view of the Liberian people.
In his view, unless that was the case, the report could not possibly have the legitimacy required to impact the peace process.
"From the nation-wide hearings held by the TRC, 52.5% of the Liberian people said they oppose retributive justice but, instead, they wanted to forgive and forget. To turn your back on the people's will of forgiveness and pursuing an agenda of retribution, creates a clear picture of political witch hunting," said the former UPP contender for standard-bearer.
Added to this, he said, there were a pressing need to review the circumstances that led one TRC commissioner, Pearl Brown-Bull, to dissent the report and refuse to affix her signature on it. "The cracks amongst commissioners raise red-flags that should not be ignored."
On the question of national security, CDC executive expressed fears that the implementation of the TRC report as is could provoke another chaotic round of bloodbath in the country. He cited as basis for his fear the 1996 political upheavals that engulfed the country in an attempt to arrest only one man, Gen. Roosevelt Johnson, during which hundreds of innocent civilians were killed in cold blood in Monrovia.
He then predicted that the consequences would be unimaginably devastating if there were what he called "misguided efforts to arrest about 200 of such persons". Mr. Teahjay said, although the command structures of most warring facts are officially disbanded, the fighting units of many warring factions were still intact.
In an interview with Power Television shortly after the Truth Breakfast Talk Show, Mr. Teah told viewers that another undoing of the TRC report was the yardstick it used to determine who was more culpable for prosecution.
"Both Dr. Amos Sawyer and Dr. H. Boimah Fahnbulleh played fundamental roles in the Liberian civil conflict. Leaving them out of the TRC Report for any sanction and going after smaller potatoes constitutes a travesty of justice and undermines the integrity and credibility of the entire report," he said.
Mr. Teahjay said he was absolutely convinced that there were those who wanted to politically get at President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf but warned that they should pursue such agenda politically and at the polls but not to use the TRC as a conduit to achieve political goals.
"I, too, want political change but the TRC is not the appropriate medium," Teahjay said. The longtime political activist and, some say, progressive hardliner has meanwhile proposed the setting up of an independent national review committee to identify implementation modalities as to how the report can be reconciled with the constitution and existing statutes.
He said he would seek appointments with both the Speaker of the House and the President to put forth his strategic implementation views to save the county from plunging into another catastrophe of incalculable human proportions.
The concerns and contentions of Mr. Teahjay may have their downside in the view of opponents to general clemency, but analysts say his entry into the debate, brandishing "evidence" of the possible illegitimacy of the TRC report and citing probably adverse consequences, indicated that the handwriting was on the wall for reconsideration.
They said the reconsideration was necessary to shield the commission's report from further punches or perforations and diatribes to its discredit and rejection by the Liberian people.
"But will the TRC bury its pride and listen to the wisdom of the majority?" some say is the billion-dollar question that would save the day.
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