Liberty Party Senator Nyonblee Karnga Lawrence’s faction has written the National Elections Commission (NEC) to formally withdraw the reported “altered constitution” submitted by Mr. Bility and Mr. Martin Kollah and team to the electoral commission.
According to press statement issued, Senator Lawrence said her party’s action was predicated on Supreme Court Justice In Chambers, Jamestta Wolokollie, in which the National Elections Commission was mandated to return the controversial 2021 Constitution to Liberty party in order to ensure its correction in line with the Farmington Memorandum signed by Mr. Bility and herself, and attested to by members of the National Advisory Council.
Nyonblee Karmga-Lawrence informed that contrary to the court’s mandate, the party receives a text message from Mr. Bility informing she and her team that he (Bility) and his team had worked with the NEC yesterday to correct and resubmit the constitution in our absence, in fulfillment of the 72 hours mandate which he thought expired yesterday.
“We communicated with The National Elections Commission to again formally to withdraw the altered constitution submitted by Mr. Bility and Mr. Martin Kollah, and on May 1, communicated with all the signatories to the Farmington MOU including Mr. Bility for a meeting at 9am today to ensure that the proper corrections in keeping with the MOU are made and signed for resubmission to the NEC,” Senator Lawrence said.
“This action followed a petition for Prohibition to prohibit all further activities by Mr. Bility and the National Elections Commission pursuant to issues involving him and us that are being handled at the level of the NEC,” the press statement said.
“We informed Mr. Bility that in keeping with the Liberian civil procedure law section 1.7 the 72 hours does not include Sunday and therefore expires today; sent him a copy of the law and encouraged him and his team to attend the meeting. Also he was informed that NEC has no jurisdiction over our corrections process, and doing it together as a party was in keeping with the mandate from the court, The NEC regulation and The Liberty Party Constitution,” Nyonblee Liberty Party faction said.
She added that Up to the end of the 72 hours yesterday, there was no response from Mr. Bility, adding, “We are pleased to announce that we have concluded the process in keeping with the mandate of the court, and have resubmitted the corrected version of the constitution in keeping with the Farmington MOU and The NEC regulation”
The NEC Regulation 3.4 (d) states: d. “Within 10 days following the convention a political party shall submit to the commission a list of its national and local officials, including those of the national executive committee indicating the political sub-division that each of them represents;
Said submission shall be under the signatures of both the chairperson and Secretary General of the convention committee”.
