The New Dawn Liberia | Truly Independent

The Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), Liberia’s main opposition party is demanding further investigation into the sudden death of one of its executive members, Montserrado County Electoral District #11 Representative Moses Saah Tandapolie.

The CDC through its National Secretary General, Acarous Gray and National Mobilization Chair, Mulbah Morlu, is calling for criminal investigation into the death of the former representative.

Preliminary autopsy report released last week by the Government of Liberia revealed Tandapolie died of heart failure. However, specimen of the remains of the fallen representative has been sent to the Philippians for further probe. Tandapolie died on March 17, 2012 in Gbarnga, Bong County where members of the House of Representatives had gone to attend a retreat.

But speaking to reporters on the grounds of the Capitol Building in Monrovia, the two CDC executives said that the police criminal investigation division should conduct a thorough investigation to establish what actually led to the sudden death of Representative Tandapolie.

According to Morlu, individuals, including Representatives Thomas Fallah, Edwin Melvin Snowe and former Montserrado County Representative Alomiza Bah, should answer questions of how they last interacted with their colleague lawmaker before his suspicious death.

Morlu claimed that some of those representatives, who were with the 65-year-old Tandapolie have a history of secretly killing people in cold blood. He lamented that it is a wrongful decision by the government to have chosen Philippines for the final autopsy.

“Philippines, we are aware that they don’t have standardized health facilities as compared to the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany or Cuba. But this is another style the government has introduced to shield the perpetrators”, he noted.

According to him, there are rumours wantonly pointing accusing fingers at traditional leaders for the death of Tandapolie due to the brief controversy that transpired between him (Tandapolie) and the Traditional Council. Prior to his death, Tandapolie accused members of the Council of bribery, but apologized later for those comments.

“Nobody should think about the traditional leaders because problem between them and the oldman was resolved. I think people should now call for investigation of those lawmakers who were around prior to his death and the Phebe Hospital Management.

Understandably, all of the lawmakers, who were on the site, have cars with them when the oldman allegedly fell off; the best thing to have done was, use any of the available cars to rush him to the hospital.

But to cover their ugly deeds carried out on the poor man, they chose to call an ambulance so delay his departure from their sight”, Morlu told a news conference last week. For his part, Rep. Gray believes the preliminary autopsy report on the remains of Tandapolie raised more questions than answers.

He indicated that the needle penetration on the body of Tandapolie should be thoroughly probed if the government is really determined to bring to book those, if any, that are responsible for the death of the former lawmaker, who was noted for being very vocal on national issues.

Rep. Gray, who also attended the legislative retreat, squarely pointed out that if the Liberian Government failed to adhere to call for further investigation on the death of Tandapolie,  the CDC will have no option but to handle the matter its way so that the perceived doers will be brought to justice.

Whatever that could mean in clear terms was not explained, but the CDC has been well noted here for staging street demonstrations, sometimes resulting to violence to press its demands.