RELEASE
Official Statement from Team Kanubah after Court Ruling June 26, 2024.
Monrovia, Liberia – Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen of the press and fellow Comrade Leaders! We are excited to have you here today and it is always a pleasure seeing you all. As we begin this press conference, we would like to applaud journalists, media professionals and communication practitioners for the incredible services you continue to deliver to the people of Liberia. Your works have and continued to enhance political stability and democratic development in Liberia.
Aim of press conference and background
This press conference aims to present our official response to the Ruling of the Trial Court in Gbarnga Bong County. The Ruling was delivered on June 18, 2024, exactly 18 months or one year six months since our Team (The National Campaign Management Team of Julius Kanubah and Beatrice Sieh for the PUL Leadership) filed a Petition of Declaratory Judgment along with a Petition for Preliminary Injunction before the Judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Gbarnga, Bong County.
The Petition for Declaratory Judgment was filed asking the Judge to declare our rights in the wake of substantial violations of the PUL Constitution by the outgoing or former leadership of Charles Coffey, the Committee on Membership, the ad-hoc Congress Committee and the ad-hoc Congress sub-committee on Elections and Inauguration.
The violations by the Coffey leadership amounted essentially to Membership Registration Fraud designed and orchestrated with the sole aim to steal the PUL leadership even before the Congress and sub-subsequent elections.
This, we believe, was disingenuous and an assault on the fundamental core of the democratic foundation and moral standing of the PUL.
While our Petition for Declaratory Judgment was yet to be legally heard and determined by the Court in keeping with law, we all saw for ourselves how the erstwhile Coffey leadership fought to hijack the PUL leadership by staging a Midnight election from 7:30pm (on Saturday, November 19, 2022) to 3:40am (on Sunday, November 20, 2022) – employing all kinds of extra-legal means. That was a sham, mock electoral exercise that will forever be recorded in the history of our Union.
As you may be aware, between the staging of that sham electoral exercise and up to the June 18, 2024 Ruling of the Trial Court, we have fully been engaged with the legal processes aiming to bring justice by ensuring that the erstwhile Coffey leadership is held accountable and that the legitimate Full Membership of the PUL be allowed to freely choose their leaders as must be in any democratic institution.
Pursuing this legal process has not been an easy journey as the erstwhile Coffey leadership employed various tactics to sidestep the rule of law by attempting to inaugurate an illegitimate leadership produced by means of fraud.
For example, the erstwhile Coffey leadership refused to listen to the pieces of advice of prominent and respected media practitioners such as Jonathan Payelayleh, Aaron Kollie; and Coffey’s own Independent Media Stakeholders’ Committee chaired by Prof Weade Kobbah-Boley and comprising the revered Kenneth Y. Best, Mellisa Annan, Teah Dogmah, Maureen Sieh, Martin Brown, Euriahs Togar, and A. Trokon Tarr.
Even the salient advice by the knowledgeable Supreme Court’s Associate Justice Yusuf D. Kaba was disrespected and ignored by Coffey and his allies who were bent on insisting on the installation of an illegitimate leadership.
The erstwhile Coffey leadership nearly succeeded in installing such an illegitimate leadership after the Associate Justice – the late Joseph Nagbe (Peace be his to his ashes) – controversially employed extra-legal means asking the Circuit Judge to vacate a Stay Order legally imposed to prevent Coffey and his allies from inducting their fraudulently elected leadership while our Petition for Declaratory Judgment was still before the Court for hearing and adjudication.
This was why we challenged the controversial Mandate by Justice Nagbe before the Full Bench of the Supreme Court. Thankfully,
after nearly a year of deliberating our Bill of Information challenging Justice Nagbe, on December 19, 2023, three of the five Supreme Court Justices under the impartial leadership of Chief Justice, Her Honor Sie-A-Nyene Youh, rendered a landmark ruling, reversing the Mandate of Justice Nagbe.
In that unanimous ruling, Associate Justice Yusuf D. Kaba, Associate Justice Jamesetta Howard Wolokollie, and Chief Justice Sie-A-Nyene Youh stated that their colleague (Joseph Nagbe) was in error not to have given us due process but to have chosen to reverse the lower court’s stay order.
This was a significantly consequential ruling and we remain eternally grateful to Chief Justice Youh, Associate Justice Wolokollie and Associate Justice Kaba for saving the integrity of the PUL from fraudsters.
It is in this respect that we strongly disagree with the former leadership of Charles Coffey, Daniel Nyakonah, Musa Kenneh, Akoi Baysah, and Team Daniel Nyakonah and Bettie Johnson –Mbayo and Julius Konton – who together stated that the Supreme Court had relied on “out-dated” law in rendering us justice and preventing them from hijacking power.
Mediation efforts
Besides the legal processes, we should report that we attended all mediation efforts initiated both by local and international partners of the PUL. These included the mediation by the Independent Media stakeholders’ Committee; the mediation by the US Government autonomous agency, USAID, along with Internews which is implementing the five-year 11-million USAID Media Activity in Liberia; the mediation by the Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas (ALJA); the mediation by Mr John O. Kollie of the Liberia Media for Democratic Initiatives (LMDI); and the Mediation by a group of former Leaders of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) convened by Peter Quaqua and led by James C. Dennis, Sr.
In all of these mediation efforts, our Team inclusive of our Legal Counsel cooperated fully and advanced the best way forward for the PUL inclusive of out of court settlement – where legally possible.
However, Coffey and his allies as represented by Daniel Nyakonah and Akoi Baysah refused all proposals put forth on the table such as the conduct of Fresh Elections/Rerun, the Establishment of an Interim Leadership, the Creation of a Technical Secretariat to run the Project Activities of the PUL.
In one of the mediations, the proposal for a fresh election was conditioned on the installation of a ceremonial leadership of the two candidates for the positions of Secretary General and Assistant Secretary General (that is, Akoi Baysah and Julius Konton) who had registered opposed and participated in the Gbarnga sham electoral exercise. While the details of that proposal were being discussed Daniel Nyakonah and Akoi Baysah pulled out of the process.
The last mediation efforts by former Leaders of the PUL were proceeding and reached a critical stage whereby the former leaders were ready to release their findings and proposals to parties in the PUL dispute. To our knowledge, two meetings were called for the release of the findings and proposals for the war forward by the former leaders.
Yet on the two occasions, Team Danial Nyakonah – Bettie Johnson-Mbayo refused to turn-up, despite agreeing to attend a joint meeting with us. Having apparently learned of the findings and proposals for the way forward, Daniel Nyakonah announced on behalf of himself and two of his Team Members (Bettie Mbayo and Julius Konton) that they were backing off from all processes including participating in any future elections.
However, the other member of Team Nyakonah – Mbayo, Akoi Baysah was announced as Acting President even though his tenure had long since expired in November 2022.
The Quaqua–initiated and James Dennis–led mediation Team held at least five in-person meetings with us at various locations to chart a way forward including a possible withdrawal of the case from Court in the wake of Nyakonah’s announcement.
Legally, the possibility of withdrawal closed the very week Nyakonah chose to announce their backing-off as the Judge had given the disputing parties a Pre-Trial Conference dispensation between 16 and 26 February 2024. During this pre-trial conference period, our Team contacted the lawyer of Coffey and his allies for possible discussions on the way forward. Our approach did not yield any result, however.
Considering the above background, it was in this context that having been mandated by the Supreme Court to resume jurisdiction and proceed in keeping with law that the Trial Court informed us of the legal proceedings into the Petition for Declaratory Judgment.
Between January 2024 and June 18, 2024, we attended various Court’s sessions as assigned by the Trial Judge, travelling between Monrovia and Gbarnga, Bong County.
As part of this process, our lawyers filed a Motion for Summary Judgment, which has formally been ruled on by the Trial Judge.
Official position on Trial Court’s Ruling
Now here is what we think of the Judge’s ruling:
We believe that the Ruling of the Trial Court is a victory for integrity in the PUL as it sets a powerful legal precedent that will live for generations of journalists, media, and communication professionals.
This is because what lies at the heart of our case is at the core foundation of our organization: ethics and integrity.
We are of the view that the Ruling sends unequivocal message that electoral fraud in the PUL (through manipulations of membership registration) is an abomination and a repugnant act.
The Ruling demonstrates that no one entrusted with leadership roles in the PUL is above the law and that upholding the PUL Constitution is a sine qua non.
Team Kanubah’s case has averted the single biggest fraud in the nearly 60-years history of the PUL. By averting this massive fraud through a meticulously pursued legal process for a period of one year, six months, we have worked to ensure that the integrous legacy of the Stanton Peabody Institution (PUL) is protected. Stanton, on whose image the PUL exists, is proud in his present place of eternal rest that as the Analyst Newspaper rightly reported on June 20, 2024, “PUL Resurrection is … Underway.”
The ruling has prevented the hijacking of power through acts of fraud, which were supported by some nefarious actors both inside and outside the media. One of those sponsors of fraud in the PUL is a known internationally sanctioned pariah.
Significantly, the ruling mandates the constitution of an eleven-member committee comprising seven former Presidents of the PUL and four Media Elders to take charge of the Union and conduct a rerun of the PUL 2022 Elections.
Team Kanubah supports and calls for the scrupulous implementation of the ruling of the Trial Court so that a democratically legitimate leadership is elected and installed at the PUL on or before October 18, this year.
We applaud the Judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, His Honour J. Boima Kontoe, for the ground-breaking ruling.
The Judge’s ruling builds on the Ruling of the Supreme Court of Liberia of December 19, 2023. In that ruling, the Supreme Court mandated the Judge to resume jurisdiction and proceed in keeping with law after reversing a controversial mandate by their peer, Associate Justice Joseph Nagbe (Peace to His ashes).
The ruling, we believe, presents a turning point to usher the Union into a new era of reform and democratic accountability. This new era of reform and democratic accountability definitely creates a path to regain the lost image of the PUL which has been tainted by the 2022 fraudulent electoral process. Team Kanubah remains committed to steering this era of reform and democratic accountability
Team Kanubah is deliberate about its mission to lead a Press Union that develops strategies for short–medium–and–long lasting stability of journalism in the age of falling media revenue. We believe our plans are best suited to improve the quality of journalism to keep our democracy flourishing.
Team Kanubah is here to Redeem, Reform, and Develop the PUL into a 21st Century professional integrity entity, guided by six pillars of transformative change:
o Accountable Leadership;
o Impartial Advocacy;
o Construction of PUL Headquarters;
o Support for Women in Journalism, Media and Communication;
o Sustainable and Inclusive Media Development; and
o Formation of Media Hubs in our Counties.
Again, we extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to all Members of the Press Union of Liberia, members of the journalism, media and communication community, the Government of Liberia, our local and international partners, and the public at large for the support and interest in the Press Union of Liberia.
As we continue this journey of redeeming, reforming, and developing the PUL, we remain committed to promoting and defending the rights of journalists, free speech and expression, and to the strengthening of greater democracy, the rule of law, and economic development in Liberia.
May God continue to guide us and save the PUL and the Liberian state.
