By Precious D. Freeman
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bhofal Chambers, says lawmakers aspiring to return to the capitol are confident in winning the pending elections because they have done their best.
Making remarks at the opening session of the 6th and final session of the 54th Legislature Monday, January 16, 2023, he added that they have done more than what their colleagues would have done and that they cannot be fooled by others to blunder the work of the country.
Speaking further, he maintained that as the Presidential and Legislative Elections draw closer, all members of the Senate and others that have the habit of requesting for people’s vote should stop.
“All those that are in the race should stop fighting for votes; let’s put Liberia first and respect the people’s decisions,” he said, advising his colleagues to work together in order to build a better Liberia.
It can be recalled that Naymote, Partners for Democratic Developments, revealed that a total of US$64,383,926 allocated to the Legislature in the 2022 budget is unaccounted for and that there is no publicly available financial report to account for the use of the money.
The civil society organization criticized the Legislature in its second edition presented January 10, 2023 which covered findings from an assessment and monitoring.
The Legislative Digest is an annual publication of the institution fostering legislative openness, responsiveness, and accountability in Liberia.
According to Naymote’s Executive Director, Eddie Jawalo, the assessment also found out that the Legislature held 167 sittings, of which 106 (63%) were regular sittings, 36 (22%) were executive sittings, 9 (5%) were special sittings, while 16 (10%) were extraordinary sittings.
The report states that there were 29 public hearings held during the year where all secret sittings were held by the House of Representatives in 2022 with the Legislature passing a total of 53 bills during the year 2022, of which 35 (66%) originated from the Executive or presidency, 12 (23%) from the House of Representatives, and 6 (11%) from the Senate.
“Popular demands to audit the financial records of the Legislature have yielded no results,” Jawolo stated further.
