Former TRC chair Cllr. Jerome Verdier has recommended that people should be subjected to psychiatric test to determine the extend of their lunacy before holding important public offices.

Cllr Verdier was responding, in a press release, to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's recent withdrawal of the nomination of two nominees, Cllrs. Punchu Bernard and Dempster Brown, of the Independent Human Rights Commission.

According to the release, the lawyerr urged the Liberian Senate to closely scrutinize the other nominees to ensure that the best results come out of this very important process. "I am convinced that greater scrutiny is essential because the selection process was not transparent and therefore faulty, for reasons that."

He said 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.

Release: "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."

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.