The Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC), Counselor Jerome J. Verdier, Sr commends the President of Liberia, H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf for withdrawing the nomination of two prominent figures of the Independent Human Rights Commission.

The President’s wise move points to the faultiness of the process leading to the nomination of these individuals and the need to give serious considerations to public interest processes like the human rights commission which will most significantly impact the peace and stability of the nation now and in the future as it strives for genuine reconciliation.

In a release issued today, Cllr Verdier said that “…in all matters involving the greater interest of the people, it is important that the processes are transparent and fair, otherwise the product or the outcome of the process will be faulty and unrepresentative of the best interest of the people in whose interest these processes are instituted.”

Chairman Verdier is urging the Honorable Liberian Senate to closely scrutinize the other nominees to ensure that the best results come out of this very important process. He is convinced that greater scrutiny is essential because the selection process was not transparent and therefore faulty, for reasons that:

The Human Rights Commission Act requires that the Chief Justice in consultation with civil society appoints members of the vetting panel to select nominees for the human rights commission. Unfortunately, the vetting panel was constituted by the Chief Justice without broad or public participation of the greater civil society. This resulted to the constitution of a panel of friends and associates in a manner and form less than transparent.

The Panel announced that some 200 persons either applied or were recommended for nomination to the Commission but failed to publish the listing of all those who applied or were recommended for the post. The absence of this left the public with no opportunity to vet the process of selection or access the level of independence and objectivity put into the work by the panel. This would have given the public an opportunity to also compare the final selection with the poll of applicants and independently determine whether the final selection was the best of the pool.

Under these circumstances, the process of selection was neither transparent nor credible; it is therefore not surprising that the President was misled into nominating very unsuitable candidates to hold such auspicious offices.

The TRC Chairman then observed that when conducting matters of interest to the public and not the individual, the standards of objectivity, competence and transparency must be at all times upheld over personal and parochial interest.

He further recommended that the Advice of National Security Advisor Dr. H. Boima Fahnbulleh be taken seriously when he said at the TRC Public Hearings that people who hold important public offices should be subject to psychiatry test to determine the extent of their lunacy.