The Unity Party’s Secretary General, Mohammed Ali, says the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP) did not review the recommendations in order to ratify the framework document.
“The committee was set up to draft the framework document intended to bind the four political parties and after the drafting of the document, it was sent to a committee to review for their inputs,” he told the court.
Testifying as government’s 5th subpoenaed witness yesterday at the Monrovia City Court, he further explained that the committee completed the work on April 25, 2020 and officially submitted the validated document officially on April 4, 2020.
He continued that the lawyers then submitted same on June 17, 2020 to the leadership of the CPP but after the submission, the parties did not approve the inputs made.
“When the reports and findings were submitted to the team of lawyers, by then, the CPP was chaired by Senator Lawrence and since the submission in June 2020, we had no further interaction as regards the CPP’s framework document,” he explained.
However, Prosecution’s 5th subpoenaed witness has reaffirmed Amb. Joseph Boakai testimony that the framework document printed and circulated for signatures was in color and not black and white.
Subpoena witness Ali stated further that he carried the framework document to each political party for signatures but the document in evidence does not represent that which he possessed.
He emphasized that the signing was done via zoom because of the global pandemic, adding that he collected the five original copies of the document sent to the political leaders and their chairpersons for physical signing and submitted same to the Secretary General of the ANC who then served as head of CPP’s secretariat.
He maintained that the five copies were to be notarized and the copy given to each party should have been reserved by their secretariat while the fifth copy was to be filed at the NEC.
However, subpoena witness Ali said after the signing of the framework document, there was a public outcry of a particular provision under Section 10 that talked about jobs distribution specifically to CPP partisans and that began to create public outcry.
He noted that there were 10 recommendations that the team of lawyers described as issues uprising from the review.
According to subpoena witness Ali, the interactions between the member parties began with the formation of the CPP which took place at different stages.
He explained that on June 18, 2018, three political parties met; that is the Unity Party, Liberty Party and ANC and they signed the declaration of intent to collaborate after series of background work.
He added that the political leaders of the four parties signed a commitment to support collaborative efforts and that after the signing of the commitment; Benoni Urey was selected among his colleagues to serve as the organizing chair of CPP.
