Legislating by Petition
By Tarty Teh

Even at our cynical peak, there is always hope for redemption. That ray of hope sometimes lasts up to the last moment before the doom – whose certainty we try to escape by wishing – is upon us. That is why, despite my own skepticism based on experience, I had grudgingly left open the possibility that the Liberian legislators who visited the United States in September 2000 on a PR blitz might give me reasons to believe that we could live with President Charles Taylor for another three years just so we could avoid deadly confrontation with the forces he gathers at state expense. But from meeting one of them and listening to the recordings of the Liberian lawmakers’ interaction with Liberian citizens in the United States, I was persuaded instead that Liberia has no constitutional alternative to the forceful removal of President Taylor.

What is most stressful for me is that I had never thought about the Liberian Legislature as being this useless. I had always felt that the Legislature’s split with the public was based on some personal expedience or the prevailing interests of the current administration. To that end, I had assumed that there were partisan arguments that could suffice as reasons for the differences between the Legislature and citizens like me. Not so at all. We cannot even get to any partisan differences because the current Liberian Legislature – if the Speaker of the Liberian House of Representatives can be considered a fair representative of its cross section – does not seem to have a clue about what it is they are supposed to do in their legislative chambers.

Frankly, if I started this article with a declaration of what I thought about Speaker Nyenduah Morkomana, the reader might think that my main reason for writing the article was to insult Mr. Morkomana. But how can I tell the truth, as I see it, about this man without giving the appearance of being mean to him? I, however, did not create that dilemma – the Speaker created it for himself. How? He does not know what he is required to do as a legislator.

Speaker Morkomana picked up a college degree from one of America’s most prestigious schools: Columbia University. Though Mr. Morkomana proudly made that proclamation, he did not bother to mention what he studied at Columbia, and you couldn’t get any closer to finding out on your own by listening to him. Yet, he answered nearly every question from the floor with dictatorial arrogance, which is anger. Even then, Mr. Morkomana’s answer is usually an elaboration of some plausible answer by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Mr. Keukula Kpoto, who makes no claims about college education. Being careful not to be the first to field a question, Speaker Morkomana merely repeats Kpoto’s answers, only adding his own undue emphasis. And so when Kpoto is wrong, Mr. Morkomana inherits the same wrong answer but makes it more ridiculous with some mindless emphasis.

Such was the answer to a question asked by an attendee who said that he did not see the concept of ‘‘checks and balances’’ working in the Liberian Legislature, given the unanimity with which the touring legislators defended every wrong the citizens suspected President Taylor of committing. Mr. Kpoto was first to answer this question. ‘‘Just because you are a legislator doesn’t mean that you must go out and look for cases.’’ Mr. Kpoto thought such would be undue interference of one branch of the government with another. Mr. Kpoto compared such with one man going into the household of another to question his judgment regarding some family matter. In other words, Kpoto didn’t know why ‘‘checks and balances’’ is needed in a democracy. Neither did Speaker Morkomana.

Mr. Kpoto elaborated further that the only way the Legislature would be drawn into matters it had not initiated itself would be through petition by the citizens. Even then, it required ‘‘10,000 signatures’’ of the aggrieved persons to win consideration of their grievance by the Legislature. Once Kpoto made that point, he left it for Speaker Morkomana to beat further. ‘‘Ten thousand, you hear, ten thousand signatures before the Legislature can act on it,’’ said the Speaker.

With ‘‘ten thousand signatures’’ hanging around each village in Liberia – ready to be attached to a ‘‘petition’’ – who the hell needs these useless people as lawmakers?

Speaker Morkomana’s habit of addressing each questioner as if in anger caused one participant to caution him about his tone of voice and his obvious impatience with people who dared question the way things currently are in Liberia. But the Speaker flatly denied sounding angry. Moments later Kpoto suggested that one of the questioners could not understand ‘‘simple English.’’ Taking his cue from Kpoto, Speaker Morkomana told a lady questioner ‘‘Maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.’’ And that was because the lady was upset by President Taylor’s earlier threat of sending students to the warfront to prove to them that Liberia was besieged by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Once on the roll, Speaker Morkomana declared, ‘‘Listen, I talk analytically. I speak analytically, you hear me?’’ Without that assertion and his Columbia University degree, it would otherwise appear that Speaker Morkomana was barely literate.

And that’s how I was able to determine that the democratic process known as ‘‘checks and balances’’ no longer has a chance of surviving in Liberia under the government of President Charles Taylor. However, it is not President Taylor’s fault. How can I blame President Taylor for making use of a herd of the programmable bombasts who are more willing to work for his pleasure than labor for their legislative constituencies? Though this had been my suspicion all along, the point was driven him more forcefully after I listened to Taylor’s Legislative choir, that toured the United States and Europe in September 2000, as recorded by LANS News Director Mr. Jerry Wion in an audio trilogy. (For a complete set of the recordings and payment details, contact Jerry Wion at WionLANS@aol.com)

Copyrighted © Tarty Teh 2000
Washington, D.C. October 10, 2000

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